When the Sun Comes Up, You Better Be Moving
by hecatehatesthat
Summary: Instead of Byakuya and Renji, some noname shinigami are the ones sent to the human world to retrieve Rukia. Ichigo is able to defeat them, and he and Rukia go on the run. AU from around chapter 51 of the manga.
1. The Single Step

_Disclaimer: _ It's Kubo Tite's sandbox. I'm just here.

Chapter 1

**The Single Step**

The rain starts suddenly. It slices down, pinging against the street lights, swirling through the blood on the pavement and rushing pink down the storm drains. It runs through Rukia's hair and into her eyes, and that must be why the body at her feet is blurring in her vision.

"_EXECUTION_, RUKIA?!" Ichigo shouts, and Rukia turns. He's standing by the body of the other shinigami, the woman, sword balanced on the back of his neck. It has gotten so much bigger since that first night, she thinks. He bows forward under its weight now.

What have I done?

"This is not your concern!" she shouts back at him. "You idiot, you shouldn't have come! What part of 'go into hiding' did you not understand?"

"Go into hiding my ass!" He starts toward her and makes it two steps before he staggers. He stabs the sword onto the sidewalk and leans on it, glaring at her over bloody hands. "What the hell were you gonna do? Just go along with them and wait to be killed?"

"I would have handled it," she answers coolly, clenching her fists.

The man at her feet groans.

"If by 'handling' you mean—"

"We have to get out of here," she interrupts.

"Fine," Ichigo says, standing almost straight and wiping the blood from his eyes. There is so much of it – it plasters his hair to his forehead, makes his uniform stick awkwardly to his sides. His socks are splotched pink and red. She isn't sure how much of the blood is his. Not enough, she fears. Soul Society will not ignore this, will not turn a blind eye to the mess this boy has made of two of their own. They will make him pay for every drop of Secret Mobile Corps blood he has spilled tonight. "But we're not—"

"You do not understand," she says, kicking the moaning shinigami hard in the head. He stops moaning.

"Rukia!" Ichigo sounds appalled.

Ichigo is a fool.

"We have to get out of Karakura," she says. "Now. Before they wake up, or reinforcements find them."

"Leave TOWN? What the hell's the matter with you? No way I'm gonna run! If more of these punks come to arrest you we'll just take care of them like we did these!" He lifts the sword and uses it to point at the heap of bloody woman passed out on the ground beside him.

"There is no IF, you fool!" Her voice comes out unexpectedly shrill. She takes a breath and tries to keep her voice under control as she continues, "There will be more, and they will be far stronger than these two, and even if you should succeed in 'taking care' of those then there will be still more and sooner or later they will kill you! If you had just _listened _to meand laid low—"

"LAID LOW?! While you were EXECUTED?!"

"—then they might have left you alone, but you just had to interfere, and now you've assaulted representatives of the Secret Mobile Corps and they know what you look like and they _are_ going to track you down and then they are going to kill you! You idiot, idiot!" The rain runs down her cheeks, over her lips.

"She's right." Rukia looks around in surprise. Ishida is leaning heavily on the lamp post behind Ichigo. She'd forgotten that he was here too. She wonders when he picked himself up. "The shinigami will be ruthless."

Ichigo glances back at Ishida, then returns to glaring at Rukia. One hand sits cockily on his hip, but with the other he still leans heavily on the sword. "Sorry if I'm not persuaded by that unbiased opinion."

"If you stay," Rukia says, fingers digging into the wet fabric of her dress, "if you are still here when they come again, your family will be in danger."

"What?!" he cries. His hand falls from his hip. "What do they have to do with anything?"

"Nothing! That is the _point, _Ichigo! You think Soul Society will care about a few humans caught in the crossfire when they marshal forces to kill you?'

"Isn't the whole purpose of your Soul Society to PROTECT PEOPLE?"

"_Yes_," she says, shoving her rain-soaked hair out of her eyes, "Yes. And now that you have been stupid enough to harm officers of Soul Society and prevent them from fulfilling their mission, you will be seen as a threat to that purpose. If a few innocents get in the way of taking you out—" she cannot finish.

Ichigo's face is stricken. Rukia cannot seem to find any air through all this rain.

"I can delay these two for a while," Ishida says, pushing up his glasses with a hand that is bleeding through its bandages.

Rukia nods at him. "Do not let them see you." Then she looks at Ichigo. "If there is anything you want to pack," she says, "you will have to hurry."

* * *

Ichigo shoves another shirt into his duffel bag and tries to block out Kon begging Rukia not to leave him.

"But sister, how can I protect them in this body?"

T-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans.

"You can call Ishida if anything happens you can't handle, but things should be much calmer here once we're gone."

Pajamas, underwear. He'd be embarrassed about throwing his boxers around in front of Rukia, but right now he couldn't care less.

"But I could be so much more helpful if you take me with you! And I won't take up much space! Sister, please, don't leave me alone with this crazy family!"

Inside the bag, Ichigo's fist closes around his pajama pants. He turns and snaps, "You're staying here, Kon!" Rukia lifts her head and blinks at him, towel frozen against her hair mid-rub. Kon just gapes. Ichigo glares at them both. "You're staying here, and if anything happens to them—" he cuts himself off, grinding his teeth.

Rukia's expression softens. She opens her mouth and the band-aid on her chin bunches, blood peeking out. Ichigo turns away before she can say anything.

Kon sniffles. "Sister…"

Socks. Where the hell are all his socks? He digs roughly through the nearest drawer, then slams it shut. He stalks past Rukia, who's hovering by his desk. She looks up at him, but he ignores her and walks out the door, shutting it behind him as forcefully as he dares.

He finds a bunch of his socks in the dryer, along with some of Karin's shirts and Yuzu's skirts and dresses. He pulls the socks out, piling them up in his arms. Starts to leave, and pauses.

Rukia has that little backpack she took with her when she ran off… but he'd lay odds she doesn't have a single change of clothes in there. Since she apparently hadn't intended to stick around this world, the stupid goddamn bitch.

Ichigo glares at the socks he's holding and dumps them on top of dryer. He pulls out one of the dresses. Stares at it. "Shit," he says, and stuffs it back in the dryer. Then he pulls it out again. This is brilliant, he thinks. He's leaving his family, leaving his sisters alone with his crazy fucking father to go fuck knows where, and now he's stealing his little sister's dresses, too.

He tries to pick the ones Yuzu doesn't wear a lot.

He bundles it all up under his arm and goes back to his room, stuffs it in the bag.

"Are you ready?" Rukia asks quietly.

"No." He slips into the bathroom for his toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo. Like he's going on a sleepover. He grabs an extra box of band-aids.

Watch, wallet… that's everything. He stands there and stares at the bag on his bed and barely resists picking it up and dumping everything in it all over the floor.

"Ichigo?"

"Yeah." He zips the bag.

* * *

They crowd under the same umbrella – Ichigo only had the one in his room – but don't speak on the way to the train station. Ichigo is taking long, quick strides and Rukia half-trots to keep up, but she can't seem make her feet match his pace. Though the rain is falling straight, her shins are wet, shoes squishy, by the time they get there.

Inside, Ichigo scowls at the big, brightly colored map for a few minutes. Rukia looks at the map too, but it makes little sense to her, so out of the corner of her eye she watches Ichigo instead. She thinks about telling him she is sorry for all of this, but the words are trapped under still-bleeding wounds and rain and explanations she cannot give.

Ichigo mutters something under his breath – "Sapporo," it sounds like. She repeats the word as he walks over to the quietly humming ticket machines. "Where the train's going," he says over his shoulder. Rukia looks back at the map and raises a finger, follows the spiderweb of colored lines out from the dot that reads 'You Are Here' until she finally finds the Sapporo-dot, far to the north.

"Rukia," Ichigo says then, and she comes down from her toes and crosses the platform to wait with him.

In a few minutes the train arrives. It is empty enough that they both get seats, on opposite sides of the aisle. Rukia is grateful for that – the seat is hard and this will not be a comfortable way to make a long journey, but it is better than standing. She looks out the window behind her, watching the city lights flash by. By the way they blur, she guesses that they are moving almost as fast as any shinigami reasonably skilled in shunpo. She wants to close her eyes, but doesn't.

"Oi." She looks around, startled, and finds Ichigo standing in front of her, duffel bag over his shoulder. "Our stop."

It has only been a few minutes. "Ichigo, we have to –"

"We have to change trains in Tokyo Station if we're going to get anywhere, idiot. Come on."

"Oh." She stands and follows him onto the platform.

They sit on a bench against the wall, Ichigo's duffel bag between them, and wait for their train. Ichigo changes position every five minutes or so – crossing and uncrossing and re-crossing his legs, folding his arms, slouching, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, leaning on the bag, draping his arms over the back of the bench. Rukia folds her hands and sits straight and still as befits a Kuchiki, and catalogues every movement. Ichigo taps a foot for a while.

It is almost an hour until their train arrives; other trains pull in and then out again, each one accompanied by small waves of people, most of them disembarking, hurrying home in the dark.

Finally, as the squeal of one incoming train echoes along the tracks like all the others, Ichigo stands. "This is us," he says, as the train hisses to a stop. A woman's voice plays over them, listing cities in a hollow, mechanical tone.

This train is nothing like the trains she has been on before. Rukia follows Ichigo through the open doors and then down a quiet corridor. More doors, another corridor. There seem to be no seats anywhere. Finally he stops and slides open a door on their left. Inside is a room containing two narrow bench seats made up like beds with hardly room to stand between them. It is bigger than the inside of Ichigo's closet, but barely.

Ichigo tosses his bag onto a shelf overhead, then drops onto one of the beds. Rukia sits on the other.

"Might as well try to get some sleep," Ichigo says, reaching up with a foot and sliding the door shut. "We're gonna be here for a while."

* * *

Rukia sits on the bed with her legs crossed under her, back against the wall, and does not watch Ichigo sleep.

It has only been a few minutes when there is a soft tap on the door. Rukia sits forward sharply as it slides open to reveal a man in a dark blue uniform. He bows, glances at Ichigo, and then quietly asks Rukia for their tickets.

She blinks at him, imperious, helpless. Tickets… are a human thing. Ichigo must have them. "I do not want to wake him," she says, and feels her expression falter, because it is true.

The man gives her an understanding nod. "Of course," he says, "I am very sorry to disturb miss, but the tickets are required to ride in the private rooms."

Rukia looks around, grabbing fistfuls of the blanket she's sitting on, but sees nothing in the compartment but them, their shoes, and their bag, and she knows Ichigo has not opened the bag since they left. She feels the dull pressure of tears gathering behind her eyes, and almost laughs at the idea that she might cry over such a thing. She forces herself to relax her hands, and does neither.

"Begging miss's pardon," the ticket man says, "but I believe those are the tickets there, in the young man's pocket."

She looks at Ichigo and sees that the train man is right – the idiot has two large pieces of paper sticking out of his back pocket, almost hidden by that fact that he is sleeping on top of them. Rukia sighs, and stands.

Her hands hover in the air for a moment, then she gently braces one hand on Ichigo's hip and tugs on the tickets with the other. They don't budge. She tugs harder. One of them starts to tear. "Fool," she mutters. Slowly, carefully, she adjusts her grip on the tickets, slipping her hand ever so slightly under Ichigo's body, and with her other hand she delicately attempts to tilt him out of the way. The train rocks, and her fingers tighten over rough denim and bony human boy.

With another push on his hip and another tug she has the tickets out from under Ichigo, and she hands them to the train man, who thanks her as he takes them. For a moment, she thinks of waking Ichigo to tell him that she did it, she figured out this stupid human ritual and completed it herself. The impulse passes, and she decides she must be more tired than she knew.

The train man tears her tickets in half and hands a piece of each back to her. Rukia takes the pieces and frowns at them as the man bows again and slips out.

After a moment she kneels and stows the pieces in a pocket of her backpack, then climbs back onto the bed and closes her eyes. She does not sleep.

* * *

Ichigo wakes up looking for Rukia, but for a moment he can't remember why. Then he realizes where he is, and that he's awake 'cause she's shaking him, and that that means he's going have to go kill whoever's after her. Or her. Toss up. He growls, "What the hell, Rukia," and sits up.

"You've got to get a handle on your spiritual power," she says, backing up stiffly and sitting on her own not-quite-a-bed.

"What? That's what you woke me up for?" He flops back down on his bed. He really is going to kill her. "Crazy…"

She stands. "I mean now, Ichigo," she says, voice hard. "This isn't just about attracting Hollows anymore. You are emitting spiritual pressure like a beacon for anyone tracking us and it is a risk we cannot afford."

Attracting Hollows. He sits up again, slowly this time. Scowls at the ground. "If I could just hide my power or whatever, wouldn't you have taught me before?"

"It was more important to teach you to fight. But now... to survive…" She folds her arms and looks away.

Ichigo stares at her, at the broad bandage on her cheek, the wrapping on her arm. _To survive._ He puts on his tough-stuff-big-deal-bring-it-on face and sits forward, grabbing the edge of the bed. "So what do I have to do?"

She slides her eyes back over to him but doesn't move her head. "Close your eyes."

He does, but he rolls them a little first.

"What do you sense?"

He frowns, and manages to shut his brain up long enough to pick up the spirit ribbons around him. It's like one of those 3D magic eye things – once he's got the ribbons, he's got them, so he opens his eyes and says, "You, mostly."

She looks startled for a second, but before he can even open his mouth to ask her what the problem is, she nods. "Good," she says, "Now find your own spirit ribbons."

"Huh?" How the hell's he supposed to do that? Ishida had grabbed his ribbon that time, but hadn't…

"Your own spiritual power," Rukia says, folding her arms. "There's a great deal of it, it should not be that hard to find."

Ichigo looks around, but all he sees are the white ribbons of the people on the train hovering around, and the thinner ribbons of the people outside, in the city, whipping across his vision. He looks back at Rukia, a dark spot in the center of her own pale red ribbons.

"Is there some kind of trick to this?"

"If you call self-awareness a trick," she says dryly. "You sense your own power all the time, you simply have to learn—" she reaches out suddenly, and Ichigo jumps, though she doesn't touch him, "—to notice it." In his face she waves a fistful of spirit ribbons, red as old blood.

Ichigo blinks, because suddenly he can barely see Rukia – except for her hand, which is still in his face, and in some strange way, _on him_ – through the ribbons he can feel are his. Every few moments there's a flash of white as some normal human's spirit ribbon drifts between his own.

"Okay," he says grumpily, "So I can see it. Now what?"

She shakes her head. "You need to be able to find it on your own." She opens her hand, and his power runs out of it, all his spirit ribbons vanishing as the last one leaves her grasp.

Ichigo closes his eyes again, tries to call back the way he'd been aware of his power when she was holding it, but the sensation has already faded. His fingers tighten on the edges of the bed and he opens his eyes. "This ain't working."

Rukia sighs. "You should have years to learn this," she says, so low and quiet he almost doesn't hear it over the rumble of the train. The she reaches toward him again, and his spirit ribbons rush back into sight. She is holding one of them, just one, and she pulls on it gently. He feels that – like a tug through his chest, only not – and finds himself standing. Rukia steps to the side and turns slightly, making room for him. "Give me your hand," she says.

He pauses a moment, then sticks his hand out, stiff, like he expects her to shake it. For a moment she just stares at him with that familiar look of I-wish-it-surprised-me-that-you're-that-stupid, and he glares automatically in response. She grabs his hand and turns it roughly palm-up and slaps his spirit ribbon down on his open palm. Her hand stays there, flat against his, holding the ribbon in place.

"That," she says, "is your power. Get to know it."

All it feels like is a ribbon, and Rukia's small hand on top of that. Ichigo scowls. "I'm going to lose it again when you let go."

"I know," she answers. "We're skipping that step. Just try to pull the ribbons into yourself." She looks at him expectantly.

"…So you're not letting go this time." Why the hell does he sound like such an idiot, he wonders, then makes himself think about trying to distinguish between the pressure of Rukia's hand on top of his and the pressure of her power humming through it. He doesn't think it should be this difficult.

"I am not letting go," she says, pressing her hand down hard. He thinks for a moment that he can feel her impatience through it, and her – fear? Then he thinks he should stop imagining things before she kicks his ass. "Focus!" she says sharply.

See, he says to himself.

"You can see the ribbons," she says in a slightly gentler version of her instructor voice, "now twine them together, tight as you can, ball them up, and pull them in."

Ichigo screws up his face and tries it.

* * *

The only thing Ichigo sucks at more than finding his own spiritual power is, apparently, controlling it. After an hour, with Rukia doing half the work for him, they manage to get most of his spirit ribbons to braid together and stay that way, but nothing they do seems to enable Ichigo to stuff any of his power back inside himself. Rukia got a weird look after the last attempt, and abruptly declared that what they'd done was good enough for now. Ichigo wanted to keep trying, but he still couldn't even find his own damn spirit ribbons without her help, and she had stretched out on her bed, apparently so she could pretend to sleep.

Ichigo thinks about telling her he knows she's faking. Maybe if he keeps her up she'll tell him why she suddenly changed her mind about how much they need to hide his spiritual pressure… On the other hand, maybe if she fakes it for long enough she'll actually fall asleep. She looks so tired. And she'll probably be able to help him manage his power better if she's not all crazy from sleep deprivation.

So he sits on his bed and leans against the window, rocking gently with the train. He can't see anything out there – now that they're out of the city, even the dim lights in here are brighter than outside. He could turn the lights off in here, of course, but he doesn't feel like going to sleep again.

He doesn't feel like staring at his reflection in the window, either, though. He'll just close his eyes for a minute.

The train rumbling over the tracks sounds almost like a voice.

* * *

When he opens his eyes he's sitting in the middle of a pale cityscape under a darkening sky.

"The hell…" he mutters.

"Oh," a voice rumbles behind him, "so the boy made it in here after all."

Ichigo turns, and finds himself staring into the open mouth of a bear.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!" He scrambles away, hands and feet slipping on the glassy surface beneath him. The rumbling voice – the fucking BEAR – laughs, and Ichigo looks back to see it sitting on its rump, one massive white paw on its pure white belly. Ichigo stops trying to run. "What the hell are you? Where am I?"

The bear pulls back its black lips in a way that might be a snarl or a smile, and answers, "Look around you."

Ichigo stares at the polar bear for another moment, then slowly looks around him. These buildings are all sideways, he realizes. And the surface he's sitting on isn't glassy – it's glass.

"Is it the world that's sideways?" a voice squawks suddenly by his ear. Ichigo whips his head around. A small white bird is circling him, up and down, and the polar bear is gone. "Or is it you?"

Is he… sideways?

Then he's falling.

He shouts again as the ground rushes up toward him – then there's a flash of white and black and suddenly he isn't falling anymore. It takes him a moment to realize he's kneeling on the side of the building.

There's an arm around his shoulders and he's snugged up against a body… a female body, he realizes and starts trying to twist away. "Oh, I don't think that's a good idea," says a woman's clear voice. Ichigo pauses, because it sounds a little like Rukia, but only for a moment, because it also sounds like the bear, and like something else altogether.

A cold hand closes around the back of his neck.

"GAH!"

The hand tightens, and Ichigo goes still. "You're looking at this the wrong way, Ichigo," she says. "Is your savior someone you should fight against?" Long black hair blows across his vision. "Or do you want to fall again?"

"Who are you?" he asks, trying to turn and see her face.

"You know me as well you need to," she replies, moving her hand from his neck to his other shoulder. Then she steps around to stand in front of him, never loosening her icy grip on his shoulders. Wind Ichigo can't feel seems to whip around her, blowing her black hair across her face, obscuring her features. "What you should be thinking about now is learning to stand in this place," she says to him, then turns her head to look over her shoulder. "You were right," she calls, "he has no idea how to change his perspective."

Ichigo frowns and follows her glance. He sees a ragged shadow at the top of the building – nothing else.

"What the hell is that?" he demands. "Who are you talking to? What the fuck is going ON here?"

She turns back to him. For a moment, Ichigo glimpses coal-black eyes before they are gone again behind the whirling hair. "We are all trying to teach you, Ichigo. Come now; it is time to stand." Her cold, sharp hands slide down from his shoulders to take his hands. Her grip is like iron, like teeth – Ichigo knows he will not fall as long as he is in her hands. He also knows she is going to let him go any second. "The world is sideways _because _you are, foolish boy," she says, and releases his hands.

He staggers, but his feet find purchase on the building. He looks at the dark window under his feet, and finds that it is _down_.

So the world is sideways. Big deal.

He looks back at the woman, but she is gone – where she stood, a snow leopard sits now, long tail twitching. "Imagine that," the snow leopard says, getting to its feet. It pads forward and circles Ichigo, brushing against his legs. "Progress." Its voice is that of the woman, and the bear, and it has the strangely hushed quality of sound in falling snow. It looks up and grins a cat's vicious grin at him, then says, "Ask Rukia where she's been."

"Huh?"

It flicks its tail up, against his belly, and then the world vanishes.

* * *

TBC 


	2. Never Let Your Feet

_Disclaimer: _Ichigo and Rukia don't belong to me. Shinichiro does!

_Author's Note: _Thanks for the feedback on chapter one, dudes and ladies! Hearing your thoughts on the story is lovely and helps motivate me to write more. Which is an important thing when one is working on a WIP of these proportions. Keep it up, if you please! I have a lot of words to go.

Chapter 2

**Never Let Your Feet Run Faster Than Your Shoes**

Ichigo is asleep once again. He's sitting up this time, head leaning up against the compartment window. Rukia envies his ability to simply sleep when he's tired, and wonders if it is a characteristic of the human body – knocking itself out when it needs to in a way that neither gigai nor souls can imitate – or if it is just Ichigo.

He sleeps quietly, but his mouth is open and his head bobs a little every time the train rounds a turn or goes over a slight bump. Drool is smeared on his cheek and chin and on the window. He looks like an idiot. Something that might be a smile pulls at the corners of her mouth. It turns almost immediately into a yawn.

Working with him to contain his power has worn her out. It has been months since she has dealt directly with anything like as much power as he has. Simply keeping his spirit ribbons visible for him has drained her more than she cares to admit – and she'd done a good deal of the weaving and folding of his ribbons, too. It was not as difficult as it might have been, for the power he had taken from her was still there, entwined with his, and that gave her some measure of control. But it was not as easy as it should have been, either. Ichigo's power was… unwieldy.

She thinks she is beginning to get an idea of why it is so impossible for him to control. It is not an idea she likes.

The window behind him has lightened to a pre-dawn grey when Ichigo suddenly starts awake. Rukia jumps a little as he jerks up and looks around, wide-eyed and blinking rapidly. His eyes find her, and the disoriented look in them fades as his shoulders slump, but he does not relax.

"You know any snow leopards, Rukia?" he asks, rubbing his hair.

"What?" She sits forward sharply, setting her feet on the floor.

"Or maybe polar bears?"

She pulls her blanket tighter around her shoulders. "What are you talking about, Ichigo."

"You do, huh…"

"Ichigo!"

"I just had this bizarro dream. Polar bear tried to eat my head, knocked me off the side of a building. Then this weird woman with really cold hands caught me, said something not very flattering about me to some weird shadow that, by the way, nothing was around to cast – and told me the world was sideways. Then she turned into a snow leopard – at least, I think she did – and told me to ask where you've been." He scowls at her. "You go somewhere?"

Rukia is shaking. She clutches her scratchy brown blanket in her fists and hopes the shuddering of the train hides the source of her trembling. "You have drool all over your face," she snaps.

He swears, scrambling to sit all the way up and wipe his mouth and cheek.

Rukia falls back against the wall and closes her eyes. So. He's seen her.

"What's the hell's that about, Rukia?"

She doesn't open her eyes. "What?"

"You. Avoiding the question."

"I…" She wonders if Sodeno Shirayuki likes it there, with him. "It is… an aspect of my power that I was not aware you… that I had given you."

Ichigo is silent. Rukia considers opening her eyes, but she does not know if she can both look at him and control her voice at the same time.

"So," Ichigo says finally, "you mean it's part of what I stole from you."

Now her eyes snap open. "No!" she says, sitting up. Her hands grip her knees, and the blanket falls from her shoulders. "Ichigo, that is not what I meant."

He's sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning forward, hands braced on his knees. His head is tilted down just far enough that she can see the grim line of his mouth, but not his eyes.

"Ichigo…" How can she tell him what she has done? He does not know what a shinigami's zanpakutou truly is, and even if he did, she suspects he would not understand – or care – what a taboo she has broken in sharing her power with him. Breaking the law is the least of it.

He stands, and suddenly his expression is supremely casual, almost a grin. "You know, I gotta go to the bathroom," he says lightly, running one hand through his hair. "I'll be back in a minute." At his side, the fingers of his other hand twitch – then he is sliding open the compartment door and disappearing down the corridor.

When he is gone, Rukia lets out a deep breath. She glances out the window at the lightening landscape rushing by, and finds herself staring at Ichigo's drool. She grimaces, then stands.

For a moment she just stands there in the narrow space between the beds, eyes closed, feeling the train rock beneath her. She thinks it may take them farther than they know.

She pulls the edge of Ichigo's blanket up to the window and swipes off the drool.

* * *

Ichigo zips back up and stands there in the tiny, swaying bathroom, wondering what the hell he's going to do. He doesn't know where they're going, not really, and he sure as hell doesn't know what they'll do when they get there. He's not ready for this. Rukia's been his guide since this whole shinigami thing started, but now… now they're really on their own, and he's sure she knows even less about surviving in the real world than he does. She can't even open a goddamn juice box.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and scowls into space. What the hell had she thought she was gonna accomplish, taking off alone?

Slowly, he realizes he's standing there staring at the stupid little steel train toilet, and rolls his eyes at himself. He reaches for the door, and stops.

Closing his eyes, he leans a shoulder against the wall for a moment. They'll figure it out, that's all. Soon.

He opens the door and almost walks right into a frowning man in a business suit. "Gah!" Ichigo jumps back. The guy just stares at him. Ichigo scowls and steps out of the bathroom.

The man backs up to let him by, looking him up and down disdainfully. "I hope you didn't stink it up, you delinquent," he mutters. Ichigo turns, but the asshole has already closed the bathroom door behind him. With a shrug, Ichigo shoves his hands in his pockets and heads back down the corridor.

He's reaching for the door to their compartment when his stomach growls.

…Shit. He stares at his hand, frozen in the air. He forgot to wash it. His dad would kick him in the head – except, of course, that the old man isn't here to give a shit. Ichigo turns around and walks back to the bathroom.

It's still occupied. He slouches against the opposite wall and waits.

When the businessman with the prejudice against orange hair opens the door and sees Ichigo, he starts.

Ichigo bares his teeth at him. "Forgot to wash my hands," he says.

The guy jerks his head in what might be a nod and walks away, failing to not look freaked out. Ichigo glares after him and pushes open the bathroom door.

As he bends over the sink, Ichigo glances at the mirror and is reminded that his hair isn't the only reason that guy was making assumptions about him – his forehead is scraped, there's a bruise on his jaw and cuts on his cheek held closed by white butterfly band-aids. Well, that respectable ass was still wrong about him. At least the injuries on his arms and torso are hidden by his shirt.

The train bumps just as he steps back into the corridor, and Ichigo stumbles. He puts a hand against the wall to catch himself.

His stomach growls again. The dining car is the one just past the car through these doors to his left. The room he left Rukia in is all the way through this car, halfway down the next car on the right. He has his wallet – he could just go get food and bring it back… it shouldn't take that long.

He walks down the corridor between their room and the bathroom for the third time in ten minutes and slides the door open before he can think about it too hard. "You hungry?"

Rukia stands. "Starving."

* * *

He knows he's ordering too much food. He knows he should be saving his money. But he's hungry and they've both got wounds that need healing and she won't fucking _sleep_, she needs to restore her energy somehow.

He doesn't think about what they'll do when the money runs out.

Nothing he orders is specifically for himself, or for her – she's been stealing his food since she first showed up at his school, and he doesn't expect her to stop now. They just grab one of the empty tables and spread everything out across it.

Rukia digs in with a voracity that makes him think maybe this wasn't a waste of money after all. The way she's shoveling in food isn't at all the way he's seen her eat before. At school, even sitting on the shelf in his closet with a plate on her lap and rice balls in her hand, asking him stupid questions about homework and humans, she ate with a cold kind of dignity. Now she's stuffing her face like a kid who hasn't been fed in two days and doesn't know when she'll eat again.

"Don't forget to breathe," he says dryly, taking a bite of his shrimp.

She freezes, chopsticks halfway to her mouth, and blinks at him for a moment. Then she sets down the half-eaten apple in her other hand and swallows the mouthful of food she was working on. She opens her mouth, looks all ready to snark back at him, but she doesn't say anything. Her mouth closes, and she stares at the table.

The hell? "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She brings her chopsticks the rest of the way to her mouth and takes a prim bite of rice.

"Uh-huh." He drops his chin into his free hand and glares at her. "Not a felony-punishable-by-execution nothing, I hope."

Her head snaps up, eyes wide, and she slams her chopsticks down on the table.

That was maybe not his best idea ever. Well, fuck her too.

"And what would you have had me do, Ichigo," she says, and her voice is ice. "Was I to let you all die?" She folds her arms, but the stern effect is kind of ruined by the train bumping and jouncing her on the seat.

He curls his lip and pulls his head up, and his emptied hand closes into a fist. "How about _telling _me sometime in the last two damn months that your employers were gonna send a firing squad so we could maybe PREPARE?"

She makes a brittle sound that he thinks is supposed to be a laugh. "Prepare? What could you possibly do to prepare? You think 'hack and slash until it dies' is a plan!"

"Better than giving up and climbing onto the execution block!" His fist comes down on the table. "What is wrong with you?"

Her jaw drops. "WITH ME?"

"YES WITH YOU. YOU—"

"I AM NOT THE ONE WHO—"

Someone coughs. Ichigo jumps and his head whips around. A blurry whisk of Rukia's hair, plus the fact that she's shut up, tells him that she's looking around in shock too. All the way at the far end of the car, Ichigo spots the source of the cough: a man sitting alone at a table behind them. He looks like he's focusing very intently on his food. Ichigo glares.

Rukia turns back to him, leaning forward with her hands gripping the edge of the table, and hisses, "I am not the one who put myself in danger by sticking my nose in where it did not belong!"

"Like hell I didn't belong!" he whispers back fiercely. "I'm just the one you gave your damn powers to!"

"You did not understand the risk you were taking," she replies coolly. She leans back, but her hands are still white-knuckled on the edge of the table.

Ichigo leans in. "I didn't understand it was a fucking _crime_, no. And ABOUT that—"

"Shhh!" She kicks him under the table.

"OW."

She lets go of the table and her hands disappear into her lap. "You did not need to know."

"Because you were handling it yourself, right."

"That's right. I was."

"Well you were doing a _shitty-ass job!_" he yells, pointing at her with his chopsticks.

"I was doing what I had to!" Her voice rises too.

"What's that supposed to mean? You had to get yourself killed?!"

"I had to protect you, you moron!"

All Ichigo can do is stare. The chopsticks in his right hand clack together. He looks down at them and finds his fist is clenched. Finally, he manages to choke, "…Protect ME? _PROTECT_ ME?"

"SHH."

"RUKIA. Why the FUCK—"

A wicked howl cuts him off.

* * *

Shinichiro can't help watching them covertly as he eats. He wonders what they are doing on this train full of sleepy old businessmen, these two attractive young people with their intensity and bandages.

They argue with an assurance that often means family, but they can't be real siblings – there is a tension between them too, the kind that isn't familial. And aside from both being quite skinny, they look nothing alike. Foster siblings fleeing an abusive home, perhaps.

He will tell Rie about them when he gets home, and she'll tease him about making up stories. But it's a long train ride, and this strange boy and girl are easily the most interesting things he's seen on it. Such an odd pair demands a story. Shinichiro is not one to refuse.

He rather likes the boy's hair – it shows some spirit. It's certainly nothing worse than some of the boys Sadako brought home when she was in high school, and most of them turned out just fine. And in spite of the obvious associations with the color, there's a friendly fuzziness to the boy's head that puts Shinichiro in mind of a peach. He finds himself thinking of the boy as Momotaro.

The girl is more difficult. He toys with calling her Tomoe Gozen – he can see her as a samurai – but he can't make the name stick to her in his mind. She is just as loud and fierce as Momotaro, but there is a hiddenness about her where the boy is all straightforward. Yuki Onna, he thinks. A different kind of dangerous.

They could simply be old friends, of course, maybe classmates. Left behind on a school trip, forced to make their own way home… they look like they've been through a tough time, that's certain. Shinichiro wonders how long they've been traveling together.

Suddenly Yuki Onna stands, and Momotaro cuts off a shout. She glances at Momotaro, and her mouth moves, but whatever she says is too low for Shinichiro to hear. Then she turns, gaze sweeping over the room, and her eyes meet Shinichiro's for a moment – he has forgotten to pretend to focus on his rice. Her eyes are dark and hard and unhappy. Then she is looking past him, at the door behind him.

Momotaro says, "Where?" and then Yuki Onna is running through the car, past Shinichiro and through the door. Momotaro is at her heels.

The door closes behind them, and almost at the same moment there's a shout and a thump. Shinichiro waits, listening, but only silence follows.

He goes back to his rice. He has only taken one bite when he hears Yuki Onna's voice, muffled by the door, cry, "Do not waste time complaining! It must be with us on the train. I'll take care of this. Go now!" Another silence follows, then some soft thumping.

The doors open again, and Yuki Onna strides into the room. Momotaro is thrown over her shoulder, apparently unconscious. Shinichiro stares openly.

She never glances at him as she crosses the car, and he is a little relieved. He will not tell Rie or the girls about that part when he shares this story – they will be laughing plenty already. Maybe he will tell Kano, though – a grandson understands things better than wives or daughters, after all, and a grandfather has an obligation to prepare his grandson for such dangers as a young man might meet on the road. And the boy is too young to laugh at Shinichiro's stories.

* * *

Rukia tries to ease Ichigo's body onto the bed, but he is large and heavy and flops off her shoulder like so much dead weight. She ducks out from under his arm and lets the body fall onto the bed as it will as she rushes back out of the compartment.

The table where they'd sat in the dining car catches her eye as she flies past, and her feet falter under her, slowing. She turns to the table, blinks a moment at their unfinished food, then seizes her chopsticks and keeps running.

She blows through two more cars and finds Ichigo in the third. As she enters he is getting smacked into a wall by a small, wiry Hollow with arms like an ape and a long, lashing tail.

"Ichigo!"

He's up again, lunging for the Hollow; it darts away, leaping up and over Ichigo's head with a sweep of its wings. Ichigo turns, jumping and swinging the sword, but he isn't fast enough. The Hollow swipes its tail at him and he barely dodges, bumping awkwardly into the corridor wall.

"You're so slow, shinigami!" the Hollow laughs as it dives at Rukia. "And look at this! Another tasty soul is so close!"

"RUKIA!" Ichigo shouts, and she can feel his power billowing out explosively.

She's already dropping, spinning to kick the Hollow firmly in the gut in the instant that it is exposed. Its belly is hard and her kick doesn't seem to hurt it, but it gives her enough room to roll away unharmed. She nearly bumps into Ichigo's leg – he's just behind the Hollow now, and a spray of blood tells Rukia he's gotten in a hit. She looks up as Ichigo pulls the zanpakutou out of the Hollow's back.

He starts to raise it for another strike as the Hollow bellows in pain, but suddenly his arm drops and the blade slams into the floor, missing Rukia's leg by inches. The Hollow twists away, hopping backwards and folding its wings over its wound. "Shinigami!" it roars, wagging its head, "I'll tear you up for that!"

Ichigo wrenches the sword up – it comes out of the floor with a metallic _shing_ and flies up, almost leaping out of his hands. He stumbles backwards, shock all over his face, and Rukia jumps to her feet and shouts, "What the hell are you doing, idiot?!" He has never been this bad with the blade, not even on that first terrible night.

"It suddenly got—"

Something – the Hollow's arm or tail – strikes her in the back, knocking her down the corridor.

"Ru—!"

Ichigo's shout is cut off when she flies into his face. They land in a tangled pile – it's a miracle neither of them is impaled on the sword Ichigo is still managing to hold in one hand. Rukia lifts her head up just in time to see the Hollow leap up through the roof of the train, and swears.

"Where'd it go?" Ichigo asks, sitting up as she climbs off of him.

"Outside," she says, groping around for her chopsticks, "onto the roof. But—"

Ichigo is already leaping after it.

"Fool!" Rukia spits. Ichigo has not been trained to fight on a moving surface, and the Hollow is already faster than he is – above her, there's a crash, then another, moving away – and one of her chopsticks has completely disappeared and even if she had a proper weapon she couldn't get up there to help. She runs, following the sound back the way she'd come.

Just inside the next car, she bumps into a man hurrying in the other direction. He's wearing the blue train uniform. "I'm terribly sorry, miss!" he says. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she says, pushing past him. The crashes are moving farther away.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I don't want to alarm miss, but we've had some… complaints…" his voice trails off as she sprints on to the next car.

Halfway down the corridor, Ichigo and the Hollow come crashing through the ceiling. Rukia leaps back and just manages to avoid ending up on the bottom of the pile. Ichigo is struggling to hold the Hollow down with one hand – the sword is in his other hand, but he isn't using it. As she watches, the shape of the blade seems to change, and the guard… flickers.

Her fists clench.

The Hollow bucks wildly, tail lashing. Ichigo is going to lose it – his right arm is straining, his knuckles are white on the shifting hilt of the sword but he can't seem to use it – and the Hollow has an arm free, is clawing at Ichigo's chest –

Rukia takes a sharp breath as she raises her hands – right fist still wrapped around her chopstick – and begins the incantation for a Way of Binding.

Ichigo manages to glance over his shoulder and then duck out of the way as she performs the Binding, but he doesn't let the Hollow go.

Its thrashing calms but does not cease, and Ichigo keeps one knee braced on its chest as he struggles to bring the sword up, arm jerking as though he can't adapt to its weight. Rukia braces her empty hand on her thigh and curses herself for needing to catch her breath.

Ichigo, teeth bared, gets the zanpakutou pointed at the Hollow's mask – and suddenly the Hollow is throwing him off, throwing the binding off, winging around and laughing, "You call yourself a shinigami! Why do you even have a blade if you can't use it?"

Ichigo moves, both hands on the hilt now, and slices through the Hollow's tail. "You were saying?" Ichigo snarls as the Hollow roars.

The Hollow swings one huge fist at Ichigo, wildly, and Ichigo cuts its arm but doesn't cut it off – he's –

"Too slow!" the Hollow screams.

It shouldn't be right – Ichigo was anything but slow a few hours ago, against the Secret Mobile Corps officers – but it is, he _is _slow and there is something wrong with the zanpakutou, his power.

"That line is getting o—"

The Hollow's claw slams into her, grabbing her around the chest, the full weight of its body behind its arm, and Rukia goes crashing through the corridor wall behind her, slamming into the ground inside a small room of narrow bunks.

"Rukia!!"

The Hollow is on top of her, its other arm braced by her head. Her left arm is free – she reaches for the chopstick in her right hand. Ichigo leaps through the hole in the wall, and the Hollow turns to growl at him. Rukia slams the chopstick clean through its hand.

"NOW, ICHIGO!"

Ichigo swings the sword down through the Hollow's head.

* * *

The Hollow dissolves or blows away or whatever it is they do exactly in that light that flashes as they vanish, and Ichigo blinks down at Rukia. She's a little bruised and bloody, but he's pretty sure most of it isn't from this fight – she'd been damn fast with that chopstick, after all. She sits up, looking at the wreckage of the wall around her.

Ichigo is opening his mouth to say something – he hasn't figured out what yet – when a flash of movement catches his eye, and he glances up to see one of the privacy curtains in front of the occupied bunks sliding back. "Shit!"

"What?" She's up to a crouch now, pushing broken boards carefully aside as she rises.

"People can see you! We have to get out of here."

She glances around, then stands, nodding briskly.

"Are you all right?!" some guy asks, poking his head out of his bunk.

Rukia pauses, one foot through the hole in the wall, the other still in the couchette room. "Fine," she says without looking back, "I apologize for the disturbance."

She steps out into the corridor. Ichigo sheathes his sword.

She walks in front of him, and he realizes there's a bloody scrape down her right calf that wasn't there before. He scowls at it. "…You _are_ okay, yeah?" he hears himself asking, and he thinks, god dammit, it's just a scrape. She's had worse.

Lots worse.

"I'm fine," she says, looking at him over her shoulder. "You look awful."

"Thanks," he drawls as they pass through the doors into the dining hall.

Rukia glances at the guy still sitting there eating, and doesn't respond. The second they're through into the next car, though, she snaps, "Why did you let a pathetic Hollow like that make such a mess of you?"

"'Let'?" he sputters. "It's not easy to fight in these tiny little hallways with people all around, you know!"

"The best way to protect the nearby humans is to kill the Hollow quickly. You should understand that by now."

"I DO. It's not like I – did you not see what was going on with my zanpakutou? What the hell was that?"

"I saw," she says, sliding open the door to their compartment. "I do not know what caused it. We'll worry about that after – what are you doing?! Don't get back in your body!"

"Huh?" He looks at her, holding his own arm. "Why not? Did you want to see if you could get it into an even more uncomfortable position first?"

She folds her arms and gives him a half-lidded annoyed look that says he should already know this. "I have to heal you first, idiot."

He turns back to his body. "No you don't."

She knocks his arm out of his hands. "Ichigo!"

"What!"

He reaches for his body again, and she sets herself between it and him, glaring. "You cannot get back into your body like that! You're bleeding all over!"

"I'm fine!"

"Can you afford to ruin that shirt?"

He stops trying to reach around her and scowls. "Fine."

She shoves him onto the empty bed. He grumpily watches the green glow of healing kidou gather around her hands as she shuts her eyes and softly says an incantation.

The train bumps just as she leans in to lay her hands on the wounds on his chest, and she ends up pushing him back against the wall.

"That's helpful," he grumbles.

She just glares at him and pulls herself up, then plants one leg between his knees and leans in again, this time at a less awkward angle. The kidou is cool and soothes instantly as it spreads out from Rukia's hands, which are sharp points of heat in the middle of the healing. The top of her head is right under his chin.

He can never tell exactly what it's doing, but he can feel the cool green light gathering in the places that a moment ago were the spots that hurt like hell. Rukia's hands move down, and the muscles in his stomach tense reflexively as she swipes her fingers over the wounds there.

After a few moments she pulls back a little and looks up at him. She's sweating.

She reaches one hand toward his face, and Ichigo catches her wrist.

She blinks at him. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing. You're done."

"No I'm not. You're still—"

"I'm not dripping blood anymore. I'm fine." He pushes her back, and she drops onto the other bed, bumping into his body. "Heal your own leg, why don't you."

She blinks and looks down, raising her leg and turning it to peer at the calf. "I did not even notice such a small scrape," she says. "It would take more energy to heal with kidou than it will to let it heal on its own."

"Great. If it ain't worth it to heal your little cuts, it ain't worth it to heal mine, either." He stands. "And you need to get some sleep."

"Mmm," she says. "I could sleep, I think."

"So get in your own bed and let me get back in my body already."

She glances behind her at his body, then gets up and crawls onto the other bed. He picks himself halfway up by the shoulders and slips back in, wincing as the remaining wounds cut through his flesh.

He looks over at Rukia again. She's curling up at the head of the bed, on top of the blankets. "Idiot," he says, standing.

She cocks her head and glares at him out of one eye. "I am trying to sleep."

"Get under the covers, then," he says, reaching for the end of the blanket by her shoulder and trying to tug it out from under her.

She rolls her open eye at him, but shifts until he manages to get the blanket down to below her waist, then scoots back and pulls her feet up, tucking her toes under the edge of the blanket and pushing it the rest of the way down. She reaches down and helps him pull it up over her. "Are you done disturbing me now?" she asks, closing her eyes and turning away.

"Shut up," he replies, sitting back on his own bed and putting his feet up on the ample empty space at the end of hers.

It doesn't take her long to drop off. Ichigo closes his eyes and leans back. He listens to the train rattling over the tracks, Rukia's soft breathing, the occasional footsteps padding by the room, and lets himself think.

Most of his anger at Rukia has dissipated – he's not entirely sure why he was mad at her at all. This whole situation is only her fault inasmuch as it's her fault she saved him that first night. He shouldn't be surprised she tried to protect him again. Even if it was stupid.

But he can't just hang around while she sacrifices herself. Again. For him. This power he has now allows him to affect what before he barely understood – the disappearing ghosts, the pools of dank blood on the pavement – it allows him, finally, to protect people. But this power is _hers_, and he'd never imagined – she'd never let on, the secretive moron – what it had cost her to give it to him.

Well, he knows now. Exe-fucking-cution. There's no way that's happening. He owes her for saving him, his family – so it's going to take more than doing her job for a while to pay her back, so what. All this time she's been teaching him to fight for ghosts and strangers, she's held herself aloof from that widening circle of people to be protected. Even when that whistling bastard Hollow was setting off leech-bombs on her skin, or hell, today, when she was stabbing freaking _chopsticks_ through Hollow claws, she handled her own defense. He respected it; it was Rukia. But she had tried to walk her not-needing-protection self right out of his world, and he sure as hell couldn't let that happen. He can protect his mountain load of people now, he can protect her too.

Except… she's always been supposed to go back to her own world eventually. He's only been holding this power in trust for her. She was supposed to get her strength back and go back to doing her shinigami work and then…

He'd been impatient, in those first days, for her to get her powers back and get out of his hair. Maybe that was why he'd assumed she'd still be popping in and annoying him during her patrols of Karakura. Her presence in his life had been a force he had no control over – Rukia was inevitable.

Now she's not.

He opens his eyes and looks at her, a strikingly tiny lump breathing slowly in the bed opposite him. He knows now that if this strange inhuman girl is gonna stay alive, he has to fight to keep her that way. And he will. Rukia can't die. No one else is going to die to protect him. Not ever.

* * *

Rukia wakes when Ichigo nudges her with a foot.

"Hey," he's saying.

She blinks groggily at him in the bright compartment. Sunlight is streaming in through the window. "I was sleeping."

"I noticed. Turnabout, fair play, and all that stuff. Get up."

She sits up and starts to run a hand through her hair, then stops in favor of shoving his foot off her bed.

"Was that necessary?" he scowls at her, but mildly. Perhaps the sunlight is getting to his brain.

"Was waking me up necessary?" she retorts.

"We're getting off the train in fifteen minutes," he says, "so unless you wanted me to carry you, I'd say yeah, pretty necessary."

Rukia frowns. "Already?"

He shrugs and looks to the side. "Next stop is Aomori," he says, picking up a bento box sitting on the bed next to him. He shoves it at her. "Eat something."

She takes the bento, but doesn't look at it. "I thought we were going to Sapporo."

"We were. But then a Hollow attacked the train, remember?" He puts his feet back up on her bed. "I figure we should get off before it gets too much attention."

"Ah," she says, and frowns down at the bento in her lap. "I should have thought of that."

"Heh," he says. "Guess I know a little about planning after all."

She snorts. "Getting off the train is not a plan, it's a reaction."

"Oi, at least I had a reaction. Unless you count passing out."

"I did not pass out!" She picks up the bento box and slaps it against her legs for emphasis. Then she looks down at it. "Where did you get this?"

"The dining car, dumbass."

"You did not need to buy more food so soon. We should—"

"I didn't buy more, stupid. I just went back and salvaged some of what we didn't get to eat before. Would you hurry up and eat? We only have a few minutes."

"Right," she says, and digs in slowly. Ichigo has saved quite a bit of food. "You ate already?" she asks as she takes a bite of mushroom.

"Yup."

She nods and speeds up carefully, mindful to eat like a Kuchiki and not an alley brat.

A ding sounds just as she's finishing. A woman's voice announces the next stop.

Ichigo stands and pulls the duffel bag down from the shelf overhead. Rukia stuffs the last bit of shrimp in her mouth while he's looking away.

"Ready?"

Mouth full, she nods and sets the bento down on the bed beside her. Ichigo opens the door. Rukia stands and follows him off the train, into the busy station.

* * *

TBC 


	3. Two if by Sea

_Disclaimer_: Never mine.

Chapter 3

**Two if by Sea**

Aomori Station is bright and busy. It hasn't been a real port in years, but it's still open to the sea, and underneath all the usual train station smells – frying food and sweets and people and piss and metal and oil – runs the smell of the ocean. It reminds Ichigo of summers as a kid.

With his family.

He pushes his way through the crowds and over to the information desk. He doesn't look back to see if Rukia is following.

He drops the bag heavily on the floor by a corner of the kiosk and starts rifling through the rack of brochures and schedules. The plan was Hokkaido, but maybe they should take a bus west or something. He's reluctant to get on another train.

"What _is _that?" Rukia asks at his shoulder.

"What is what?" he says, not looking up. There's a ferry schedule. That would work.

"That smell!"

"What smell? Civilization?" Looks like the ferry out of Ohma is cheapest, but that'll be a hell of a walk…

"I am not an idiot, Ichigo. This station does not smell like the one in Tokyo."

"Oh." He looks away from his schedule and frowns at her. "You mean the ocean?"

"The ocean?" She looks puzzled but suddenly – hopeful. The hell is that about. He looks back at the ferry list. The closest one that isn't twice the price of the Ohma ferry is a much longer ride to Hokkaido. "Ichigo!"

"Yeah, I heard you. Don't you know what the ocean smells like?"

"How would I? There is no ocean in Soul Society."

That makes him looks over in surprise. "What kind of heaven doesn't have an ocean?"

"Who said it was heaven?"

"Uh, you?"

"I never said anything of the kind. Where is the ocean? Can we see it?" She stands on her tiptoes and looks over his shoulder, like he's hiding the _freaking ocean _behind his back.

He sighs. "Well, we can't go swimming or anything, but there should be stairs down to the docks around here somewhere…" He looks around, sticking the brochure in his back pocket. "There they are." He picks up the bag and leads her over to the broad staircase by the signs for the exhibition ferryboat.

They tromp down past happy-looking tourists to the deck beside the entirely too bright white-and-yellow ferry. Rukia runs past him and past the boat, hopping onto the railing by the open water. Her dress billows in the wind. Ichigo rolls his eyes and walks after her.

"It's big," she says, turning to him, "but…" Her hair whips around her face, but he can see the prim displeasure in the pulled line of her mouth. Like the entire ocean is one of those vaguely foolish things she thinks the human world is full of. "It is not very blue."

Ichigo drops the bag by his feet and leans his forearms on the rail. "It's different colors in different places."

"Why?" With her feet on the bottom rung of the rail, her head is on a level with his.

He shrugs. "Different depths, different climates, different minerals and stuff in the water. All kinds of reasons."

"Hmm," she says, and looks back out to sea.

He turns around to lean back on the rail and lets her look for a few minutes. He watches the people milling around the ferry – mostly older couples and foreigners, a few families with young children. A woman laughingly breaks off pieces from a small loaf of bread and hands them to a little boy who keeps running off to throw the bread to the seagulls, then back to her again.

"We should get going," Ichigo says, not looking at Rukia.

* * *

Rukia's legs are tired and she's sleepy and she is thirstier than she's been in many years. They've been walking for almost an hour down city streets in the sun, out of sight of the ocean. The wind blows fiercely here, down from the nearby mountains –she cannot smell the sea.

"How much farther?" she asks, and then regrets it. They've got to get as far as they can.

He glances at her. "A mile or so, I think. You okay?"

"Fine," she says sharply. Her throat protests and she tightens her lips against a wince. "A little thirsty," she admits.

"Yeah, me too. Let's find a vending machine." He runs a hand over his eyes and looks around. Rukia can see the weariness in his face. She looks away.

Her eyes burn. She blinks a few times and squints around. She knows what a vending machine is, but she also knows there are many kinds, and not all of them sell drinks. She isn't sure how to tell them apart.

There is one of the big brown boxy kinds up the street not far ahead of them, and after a moment she points it out.

"That's food," Ichigo says, not even glancing at it. He leads them past it, to the street corner, and pauses for a moment. Rukia almost walks into him. He glances at her, but she can't read his expression. He keeps walking.

Another block up, Ichigo pauses again, then turns the corner and walks up, not to a machine, but to a street vendor selling squid on sticks. He buys two bottles of water and hands her the first. After a moment he asks if she wants something to eat, too.

Rukia just shakes her head and focuses on opening her bottle. She gets the cap off and squeezes it tight in one hand as she tilts her head back and gulps down as much water as she can before she has to breathe again. When she looks at Ichigo he seems to be doing the same. The bottle in his hand sucks in on itself.

"Aaahh," he says as he pulls his water bottle away from his lips. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then screws the cap back on the half-drained bottle. He looks at her. "Good?"

"Yes," she says, and takes another swallow of her own water. The cold lingers in her chest. Her eyes are irritated. She closes them for a moment.

"Great," Ichigo says. His voice is almost toneless, and she opens her eyes, but he is looking past her. "Let's find this ferryboat."

* * *

She leans on the railing on one side ("the port side," Ichigo told her) of the open deck at the front of the ship ("the bow"). She watches the water rush by, white and leaping along the edges of the boat, rippling dark blue-grey farther out. There is something comforting about the monotony of it. Her eyelids are a little less heavy.

Ichigo lies stretched out in the sun on a bench behind her, arm thrown over his eyes, one leg hanging over the side and resting on top of his duffel bag. Rukia looks back at him every few minutes, but he hasn't moved since they got up here. She hopes he is sleeping, but suspects he isn't.

She's close enough to the front ("the bow!") of the boat to see the way it dips in and out of the waves as they go. The motion is very different from the rumbling of the train. She stumbled a few times when the ferry first began to move, but she's used to it now. The up and down of the deck is strange but smooth; it is the strangeness that reassures her. Maybe this will be far enough. Maybe.

She likes the salty-and-something-else ("Briny, I think. Don't ask me what that means.") smell of the air, and the sound of the waves crashing against the ship's hull. There's an openness to it all that she thinks should make her feel vulnerable, but doesn't. Maybe she is just too tired now to even worry properly. The motion, the sound – it might put her to sleep if she let it. But she shouldn't, not with Ichigo asleep.

If he is asleep. She turns away from the rail and looks at him again, then walks over to his bench. She's debating whether to say something or poke him or just leave him alone when he says, "If you wanna stand a little to the left you can keep the sun off my face."

She sets her hands on her hips. "Why aren't you sleeping?"

"It's too hot."

It is much hotter here than it was in Aomori, even with the wind. "How much longer are we at sea?"

He lifts his arm off his eyes and squints at his watch. "Getting seasick already?"

She shakes her head. "I like the ocean."

He drops his arm back over his eyes. "Good, 'cause we got another two hours to go."

Rukia frowns down at him. "Have you slept at all?"

"Not really."

She sighs and looks over her shoulder at the ocean for a moment. Then she turns back to Ichigo and kicks the duffel out from under his foot, toward the middle of the bench.

"Oi!"

She turns and sits on the bag, back against the bench seat. "Are _you _getting seasick?"

"…No."

"Ah." She closes her eyes. "Warn me if you need to go get sick somewhere."

"I'm not getting seasick."

"Okay."

* * *

Ichigo is not the motion-sick type. It's just that he's worn out, and hungry, and it's hot, and all that stuff makes his stomach a little unsettled, okay, and then the boat moves _so much_. It's not like a car or a train or a plane. The whole up-and-down thing is—

Don't think about it.

Two more hours. He's tempted to get up and get something eat, but he checked out the cafeteria on the way up and the food looked crappy and expensive and they really don't have the money to waste.

He wants to get a motel room when they get to Hokkaido. Just someplace to crash that has a bed and doesn't move. He hasn't slept more than a couple hours at a time in something like 30 hours now – more, probably, but he thinks figuring it out would only make it worse – and he's pretty sure Rukia has slept even less. Though she has managed to fall asleep here, slumped on the duffel bag. Her head rests on the bench by his hip.

There's a thump close by and Ichigo pulls his arm from his eyes and looks up.

Some guy has just barely managed to avoid tripping over Rukia's legs, which are kind of splayed out on the deck. Ichigo watches the guy straighten himself out and open his mouth like he's gonna say something. Ichigo raises his arm a little higher and glares.

The guy sees him and shuts his mouth. He starts walking again, a little farther out from the benches now. He should've been doing that in the first place. It's not like her legs take up a lot of space.

Ichigo drapes his arm over his eyes again and shifts a little on the bench. Rukia's head just touches his side.

The wind has picked up some, enough to keep the heat at tolerable levels. His limbs feel heavy, and his stomach seems to have resigned itself to being hungry in a quiet way for a while.

He should stay awake. More idiots might trip over Rukia.

But the sun is kind of pleasant now. And the wind. He does like the smell of the sea.

He yawns.

* * *

Ichigo wakes up in shadow. The wind is suddenly chilly, and his arm is covered in goosebumps when he pulls it stiffly away from his face.

He sits up slowly, staring up at the sky. Heavy clouds have rolled over the sun and they don't look like they're just passing through. There's blue sky off in the distance behind the ship, but none ahead – this charming turn of weather is what they have to look forward to when they hit Hokkaido, then. The wind whips past in uneven gusts. Storm wind.

"What are we going to do?"

He looks down. Rukia is sitting up on the duffel bag with her arms wrapped loosely around her knees, watching the ocean beyond the ship's sides – bulwarks, rather – with a contemplative little frown. If she hadn't just spoken he'd think she was completely lost in her own thoughts. "What are we gonna do about what?" he asks, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.

She doesn't look at him. "When we get to Hokkaido."

His hand drops back to the bench and he's quiet for a moment. "Get a hotel," he says finally. "Get some real sleep."

Now she turns to glare at him from one eye. "And then?"

He sighs. Then he turns, drawing his legs up behind her and around until he can sit forward on the bench with his feet on the deck. "Money's gonna run out soon," he admits, leaning his forearms on his knees. He taps the fingers of one hand against the back of the other, curling it into a fist. "We'll… find jobs, I guess. Do you know…"

"Hmm?"

He doesn't answer. She turns to face him fully, then gets to her feet. Ichigo doesn't look up, and after a moment she sits on the bench beside him.

"Do I know what?" she asks. Her voice is soft, but tight.

Do you know how long they'll look for us? How long we'll have to run like this, live like this? How long before we're safe? How long till I can contact my family, till I can go home?

He shakes his head. "Nevermind."

"Ichigo…"

He stands. "It looks like it's gonna rain out here. We should go below decks." He kicks the duffel bag lightly. "Stuff'll get wet."

He expects her to say something sharp. When she just breathes a heavy sigh, he turns to look at her in surprise. She's drawn her knees up onto the bench and pressed her forehead against them.

"You okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine," she says, then she laughs a little and shakes her head slowly against her knees. "I was thinking that I would like a drink. But fifteen year olds can't buy sake—"

"Sixteen," he corrects before he can stop himself.

"—can they…" She blinks up at him. "What?"

He shoves his hands in his pockets. "I'm sixteen."

"Since when!"

"Couple days ago." He shuffles his feet a little, avoiding her eyes. "You _drink_?"

"Ichigo, I am old enough to be your great-grandmother, I have of course had my share of alcohol." She stands and kicks him lightly behind the knee. "Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday!"

"Jeez!" He glares at her. "It wasn't a big deal!"

"Why didn't your family celebrate? I would have thought I'd hear your father singing from a block away."

"Yuzu made a cake," he says with a shrug. He leans over and picks up the duffel bag. "But they always wait for the weekend to break out the party hats and noisemakers." He walks over to the stairs. A few fat drops of rain have started to splatter against the deck, which is almost entirely deserted now, except for the two of them. When he looks back, Rukia is sitting on the bench again. "What the hell are you doing, Rukia? Come on!"

She stands up and walks over to the railing.

"Rukia!"

"I'm coming!" She turns her face away from the ocean for a moment to glare at him. Then she looks out into the distance one more time before she trots across the deck and passes him on the stairs as it starts to pour.

* * *

It's still pouring when they get off the ferry in Hokkaido. Rukia rubs her arms and stands close to Ichigo, trying not to shiver.

"We might as well get a room in town," Ichigo says, opening the umbrella. "I was thinking we could make it another town over this afternoon, but in this rain…"

It patters against the umbrella over their heads, into small puddles on the pier. Rukia nods. "We will have to move on tomorrow, raining or not."

"Yeah," he says. "But that's tomorrow. Right now we need rest."

She squints through the rain, past the lines of people hurrying away. A neon light glows a little way down the road on the other side of the parking lot, and she points at it. "There's a motel there."

Ichigo coughs. She looks up at him. He's looking away, and – it's hard to tell in this low grey light, but – his cheeks are faintly pink. "That's a love hotel, moron."

"…Oh."

"Anyway, we've gotta get inland a little way. Anything this close to the shore is gonna be too expensive."

She frowns. "You just want us to wander in the rain until we find something?"

"Idiot, I got a brochure on the ferry. Hold this a minute." He thrusts the umbrella handle at her.

She glares at him, but takes it, holding her arm high to keep the umbrella over both their heads while he reaches into his back pocket. He tugs out several folded pieces of glossy paper and shuffles through them, then pulls one open and squints at it. After a moment Rukia rises onto her toes and looks over his arm at the paper. It's a map, only slightly less confusing than the maps in the train station.

She's just found the pier on the map when Ichigo folds it up again and takes the umbrella from her. "This way."

He doesn't walk so fast this time, and her shoes stay almost dry.

* * *

The warmth of the motel lobby makes her shiver. The cold seems to be inside her, under her skin, and it intensifies against the heat in the small room.

Beside her, Ichigo shakes out the umbrella as he folds it up. She watches the fine droplets of water sprinkle onto the grey tiles by the door.

"You're getting water all over," a child's voice says sharply.

Rukia turns in surprise.

"Kisho-chan!" A woman hurries out from the room behind the front desk, gently pushing aside the young boy who stands there glaring, barely tall enough to see over the counter. "Be polite to the guests!" She looks at Rukia and smiles. "I am terribly sorry for my son's rudeness," she says, bowing slightly. "My name is Nishimoto Ayame. How may I help you this evening?"

"Just a room for tonight," Ichigo says, stepping up to the desk and setting the bag down. "Thanks."

Rukia eyes the worn-looking brown chairs off to her right, but remains standing by Ichigo. They will rest soon.

"Of course. And would you like—" A phone rings in the back room and Nishimoto Ayame jumps slightly. "I'm so sorry," she says. "I have to take this. We've been waiting—" Another ring. "Kisho-chan, help our guests, and _be polite_!" She hurries into the back, sliding the paper screen doors closed behind her.

Kisho gives them a bored glance, then turns to the computer behind the desk. "Western or Japanese room?"

"Whatever's cheaper," Ichigo says wearily, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Western," Kisho says, tapping at the keyboard. "One bed or two?"

Ichigo straightens. "Two," he answers quickly.

Kisho glances up, eyebrow raised. "Right."

Ichigo tenses like he's going to say something, but he just leans on the wooden counter and scowls. Kisho seems unimpressed. He drops a key on the counter and says, "115. No smoking, check-out's at 11 tomorrow." Then he looks up at them and smirks. "Enjoy your staaay!"

Ichigo snatches the key and walks out. Rukia gets only a glimpse of his face as he turns, but she is pretty sure he's blushing again.

* * *

TBC 


	4. If You Want to Know Who Your Friends Are

_Disclaimer: _ You know which ones I made up and which ones I didn't.

Chapter 4

**If You Want to Know Who Your Friends Are, Lie by the Roadside and Pretend to be Drunk**

Ichigo sighs and sinks deeper in the bath. He's alone, the water is hot and his muscles are very happy right now, in a melting into uselessness way. He closes his eyes and leans his head back on the tiles.

It's only a moment later (or maybe it isn't – has he been sleeping? He doesn't remember sleeping, but he's not sure he was awake) that he hears footsteps on the tiles. He turns his head slightly and opens his eyes.

There's an old man getting settled at one of the faucets. Ichigo closes his eyes again and focuses on relaxing without falling asleep and drowning. The not drowning part goes pretty well, though he's fuzzier on the not sleeping part – he's pretty sure that hearing, "Evening, son," wakes him up, mostly because it seems like only a moment has passed. It has to have been a few minutes, at least, because the old man is stepping into the bath.

"Evening, Grandfather," Ichigo says, lifting his head and blinking.

"You're not traveling alone, are you?" the old man says, and his voice is friendly, sympathetic, but Ichigo tenses.

"Huh?"

The man smiles, stubbled cheeks crinkling. "You have that look about you," he says, "like you've come a long distance today."

"Oh." That tired look. You're in a hotel, moron, everyone here is traveling. "Aa. I have."

"Not done, huh?"

Ichigo sits up a little. "No, sir," he says slowly.

"When you're my age, son, and you've traveled as much as I have, you'll be able to see by a man's face whether he has far to go too."

Ichigo slumps back down in the water. "I hope not, sir."

The old man laughs. "It's not so bad. Someone your age should be enjoying his chance to see the countryside with – friends? Family?"

Ichigo glances at the wall that separates them from the women's baths. "A friend," he says.

"Aha," the man says. "I thought so. How lucky for you! You know, they say two shorten the road."

Ichigo snorts quietly. It would be funny, except it isn't.

He can feel the old man watching him thoughtfully. "It's not my place to say, of course," the man says slowly, scratching his chin, "but you know, I've found that the worst trips make the best stories."

Ichigo leans his head back against the tiles and closes his eyes. "I wasn't looking for a good story," he mutters.

The old man laughs, making the water ripple. "Of course not! And you wouldn't find one if you were. But don't ruin your trip by making the mistake of thinking that what this journey of yours means to you now… is what it will always mean."

Ichigo lifts his head to frown at the old man.

The man grins at him. "Why, I remember one time when I was just a little older than you, my brother and I found ourselves stranded in this little tourist trap of a town up the coast here a ways – oh, what was it called, something completely stupid… Well, we're in this ridiculous little town, our car has broken down, the client we're up there to see has run out on us, and we've been arguing about what to do – arguing while lounging on the beach, mind you – for two days when our wallets are stolen." He shakes his head a little, still smiling, but staring into space now. "We spent the rest of the summer hawking fried squid and eel and crappy souvenirs. Long hours in the miserable heat for next to no money, nothing but eel to eat and a weird-smelling hole in the wall for an apartment… It was one of the best summers of my life."

"Sounds exciting," Ichigo says. He means to sound sarcastic but it comes out kind of interested. He doesn't want to be interested, but this guy's talking about doing more or less what he and Rukia are going to have to do. He might have advice or something. Even if he is crazy. "How did you find the apartment?"

* * *

Rukia slides back into the soft hotel yukata, closes her locker, and glances back at the baths before padding toward the exit. It was a nice bath, small and plain but very hot, and it had felt wonderful on her exhausted legs. But it was also empty, and after only a few minutes Rukia had found she was reluctant to be there alone.

She kept thinking of the large, elegant private baths on the Kuchiki estate. She had never imagined she would find a lonelier place to wash.

As she turns the corner out of the bath area into the hall, she crashes into the boy from the lobby.

"Sorry," he mutters as she stumbles backwards, more from the surprise than the impact. She should not have allowed herself to become so distracted.

"That is all right," she says, or tries to say, but the boy looks up at her and cuts her off with an, "Oh, it's you," and an eye roll.

She frowns at him – what was his name? Kito? Kisho? "Is that how you speak to—"

"Where's your boyfriend?" He curls his lip at her.

Rukia draws herself up. "Do you have some kind of problem with attractive young guests? A grudge? An old trauma?"

"I'm just sick of city kids like you who think they can skip out on their bill just because we're small and they're just passing through."

Rukia's adjusts her frown from confused to stern. "Perhaps if you did not offend your guests they would feel more inclined to pay."

"If you—"

"Not," she continues, raising her voice slightly in the commanding-but-not-shouting way she had been taught to reprimand unruly servants or subordinates, "that Ichigo or I would ever consider stooping to your level by withholding money that we have already agreed to pay. Your mother seems a perfectly respectable woman, though she clearly needs to discipline her son more."

Kisho's mouth is open in obvious shock, but his eyes narrow with what might be disgust or outrage.

Rukia does not have the energy to engage the boy any further. And using her Kuchiki training makes something in her gut ball up painfully.

She brushes past Kisho before he can speak again and walks softly back to the room.

* * *

"Sabiru!"

Ichigo looks over his shoulder as he finishes wrapping the towel around his waist. "Huh?"

The old man is still sitting in the bath. His back is to Ichigo, and he doesn't turn as he says, "The name of that town where I worked all that summer. I knew it was something stupid…"

"How can a town called '_Rust_' attract tourists?"

"You'd think it would scare people away, wouldn't you? I suppose maybe it does, but it must make some of 'em curious, because the place does all right. It's a nice little town." He pauses, then adds, "Not rusty at all," and laughs softly.

Ichigo rolls his eyes. "Aa," he says, and starts back through the faucet area toward the locker room door.

"Can't be more than… sixty or seventy kilometers up the coast," the old man says thoughtfully. Like he's talking to himself, except that he wasn't that loud before.

Ichigo towel-dries his hair in the locker room and slips back into the hotel yukata. Seventy kilometers more might be just the right distance.

* * *

Ichigo opens the door to their hotel room and freezes.

Rukia is seated on the floor in front of the honor bar, an open bottle by her feet and a sake dish in her hand.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

"Shut the door, fool," she replies mildly. "There is no need for shouting."

He kicks the door closed – gently – then takes two steps to cross the tiny room to Rukia and the fucking alcohol. "What the hell are you doing with that?"

She raises her eyebrows. "I am drinking it."

"I see that," he growls. "You're in here alone for five minutes and you raid the goddamn honor bar? What's wrong w—" He snaps his mouth shut. She doesn't know. Of course she doesn't know. He should have thought to tell her before.

"Honor? What does honor have to do with it?"

Ichigo puffs out a sigh and sits down on one of the beds. "All the stuff in that fridge costs extra money," he says. He rubs his face wearily. "They ask you if you had anything from it when you check out, and you pay for whatever you say you took. They take your word for it. On your honor."

She looks back at the bottle. "Oh." She touches a finger to the rim, then draws it gently around the circle. "I could put it back? I have not had much yet."

He shakes his head. "Might as well drink it now," he says. "'Sopen."

She nods, but stares into her saucer and doesn't drink.

For a moment they sit in silence. Then Ichigo makes a face – alcohol is pretty crappy-tasting stuff, but it wouldn't suck to be drunk right now – and scoots down to sit on the floor beside her. "There another dish, or should I just drink from the bottle?"

She gives him a sharp look from the corner of one eye, then sets her own dish down on the floor. She takes another from the top of the mini-fridge and hands it to him.

"Have you had sake before?" she asks, picking up the bottle.

"I think I was about seven the first time my old man 'accidentally' slipped me the wrong cup at a festival," he says. He decides not to mention that at ten years old he'd stopped letting his idiot father give him the sake. It wasn't that he was opposed to alcohol; it was just that the bastard shouldn't be getting away with that stuff. Mom would have killed him if she'd known.

Rukia snorts softly but doesn't take her eyes off the sake as she pours it delicately, one finger just touching his on the underside of his dish, steadying it.

She sets the bottle down between them carefully, then turns her body to face him, adjusting the green-and-cream patterned yukata over her legs before finally picking up her own sake dish. "Cheers," she says.

"Shouldn't drink alone," he says, raising his dish. "People will think you have problems." He drinks.

She rolls her eyes and raises her dish to her lips.

* * *

"Empty," Rukia says, turning the bottle all the way upside-down and shaking it a little over her dish. "I do not feel remotely drunk yet." Her chin wrinkles up.

"Yeah. Me neither," Ichigo says, which is a total lie.

"I do not suppose we could afford more from the honor fridge." She sets the bottle down firmly on top of the fridge, then cracks the door open and peers gloomily inside.

"Nooo…" He's not drunk but he is a little buzzed and this is probably not a good idea, "but…"

"But?" She perks up instantly. The fridge door closes.

He scratches his head. "I think I remember seeing a beer machine outside. Those guys're cheap."

"Guys?" She gives him that look of puzzled superiority.

"Things. Whatever." He stands. No problem. "I'll go see."

"I wish to see this beer machine as well!" She leaps to her feet, way faster than is at all necessary. His head goes a little spinny just watching her. He winces.

"Right," he says, and scuffs his feet a half step across the floor until his knees bump into his bed. He leans down to grab the jeans discarded across the comforter.

"What are you doing?" Rukia demands. She's already by the door.

"Need my wallet," he mutters, and as he fishes it out of his pants pocket, belatedly adds, "stupid."

Rukia doesn't say anything, but she gives him an evil look on the way out the door. It's only about a three point five on the scale of Evil Rukia Looks, though – above "don't get my shoes dirty when you die of your own idiocy, human scum," but way below "I will pull your liver out through your eye sockets and then feed it to the nearest Hollow." He is not impressed.

The hall is quiet in a soft nighttime welcome-to-the-middle-of-nowhere way. Ichigo hears exactly one car go by all the way to the vending machines outside the front room of the motel.

Cigarettes, soda, coffee… beer.

"What kind of beer d'you like?" he asks her.

"Can we get one of those large cans?" she says, pressing her fingertip to the glass. Her nose isn't far behind it.

Ichigo squints at the prices. "Sure," he says after a moment. "Big ones are a better deal. You want pale ale? Lager? Dry?"

She straightens slowly and stares at the machine for a moment in silence. Ichigo watches her reflection in the glass, silver and red cans under her skin.

"The Kuchiki do not drink beer," she says softly.

The hell. "Yeah, well—"

"It has been nearly fifty years since I have tasted any alcohol but the finest sake." Her reflection looks up at him in the glass. "I do not remember what kind of beer I like. I may never have known. We were not often in a position to be choosy about such things."

"We?" he repeats. What the hell did that all mean? Was her family rich? "Did you and your friends sneak beer as a kid or something?" Maybe everybody was rich in Soul Society.

She looks away. Another car drives by and for a moment her solemn face glows white, then red. "Something like that," she says. Darkness falls over her features again. "Which kind has the most alcohol in it?"

Then again, she said Soul Society wasn't heaven. "Uh…" He scans the labels. "Kirin Dry it is."

* * *

Ichigo is laughing. No, not laughing – giggling.

Rukia is uncomfortable with this development, though not as uncomfortable as she might be if her enormous can of beer weren't nearly empty. It's all right; she took what was left of Ichigo's away from him when the laughing began. Not enough remains to make _her _laugh – there would not be enough even if the can were full – but there is plenty to allow her not to care about Ichigo losing his mind.

"I do not see what is so funny," she says, and takes another prim swallow of her beer. She keeps her other hand firmly over Ichigo's beer can. He has tried to take it back twice so far.

"It's not funny," Ichigo giggle-snorts. "I'm not laughing."

"You are embarrassingly drunk," Rukia informs him. Swallows more beer.

"'M not embarrassed," he says, almost calmly, and lets out one of those exhausted laughing-sighs as he leans his head back on the bed.

"You should be." She shakes her can a bit. Empty. "You will be, when I tell you about your giggle fits tomorrow." She tosses the can at the trash receptacle in the corner.

He giggles again. "Probably!" His head lolls to the side, and he snickers with his forehead against the bedspread. The pressure of his power wobbles against her skin.

Rukia does not think it is a happy laugh, and his jumping reiatsu is certainly not a good thing. She leans away from it. "Ichigo," she says commandingly. "Tell me why you are laughing."

"It really isn't funny," he says, shoulders shaking, voice muffled by the bed his face is still pressed against. "And I'm not drunk enough to tell you how screwed we are… uh. Crap." His power pulls away for a moment, then thumps back over her.

She reminds herself grimly that he cannot help it and sits forward. "What." She hears the sound of crumpling tin and realizes she is crushing Ichigo's can. She forces herself to stop and raise the can to her mouth composedly, draining it.

He isn't laughing anymore, but he doesn't look at her. Doesn't so much as lift his head away from the bed. "I didn't mean… uh."

"Ichigo," she snaps, slamming the now-empty can down for emphasis, "this is hardly the time to be keeping things from me."

"I'm n—"

"You are. And it is a waste of time, because I assure you, Ichigo, I am aware that we are, as you put it, screwed. I am aware of that in ways your tiny human brain cannot comprehend, but if there are human reasons as well, you—" her voice went weak and suddenly a sound tripped out of her mouth, a completely wrong sound. She swallowed it and tried again. "You must tell—" there it was again! And there was a trembling in her belly, but it could not be—

"Did I just hear a giggle?" Now he was looking at her, squinting suspiciously like perhaps she was malfunctioning.

Perhaps she was. "You absolutely—" she clamps a hand over her mouth but the laugh just escapes through her nose "—did not!" she finishes, words squished together under hand.

Humorously squished. Rukia squeezes her eyes shut. Her body shakes.

"You—" Ichigo is laughing again, "you're drrrr_unk_."

"It must," indignant giggle, "it must be the gigai! Or perhaps the absence of my power." Which is Ichigo's fault, his spiritual pressure getting all over and messing her up… Oh! She points at him fiercely. "Or it is _your_ power! It is very rude to run around letting your power touch other people all the time, you know."

His giggles subside long enough for him to form a confused scowl. "Er…"

"My point—" must his stupid frown be so _funny?_ – "is that, that it cannot be the alcohol because we have barely drunk – druunk – anything!"

"I was blaming the empty stomach," Ichigo grins.

She snorts. "I always forget that one. We never drank on full bellies."

"Why not?" He squints at her, as if he can almost make out the answer on her face. "And who's this 'we'?"

"We were never full," she says, and then she realizes what she is saying, and stands. Stumbles. Straightens. It isn't funny anymore.

"'Samatter?" He blinks up at her.

"I…" She keeps one hand braced against the wall. The other balls into a fist at her side.

"Rukia?"

She shakes her head. "This is foolish," she says. "We should not be allowing ourselves to become intoxicated when…"

"When Soul Society is coming to kill us?" Ichigo finishes, glaring at her. "You were the one who wanted to drink."

"I would not have had enough to become drunk if—" This isn't right either. She closes her eyes and tries to think.

"If what? If I'd just let you drink alone? Stayed out of your way?"

"That is not what I meant, Ichigo."

"Yeah? What did you mean, then."

Her body feels very heavy. She falls back to a seat on the ground. "I should not be… I think I am talking too much."

Ichigo is quiet. After a moment Rukia looks at him. He is looking out the single small window by the door, frowning more deeply than usual.

"Do you really think they'll find us here?" he says quietly, not looking at her.

"…No," she sighs. Then, "I don't know. It was the explosion of power you used against the Menos that drew their attention before. You are still leaking power – more now than before! I should have thought, your control…" She shakes her head. "Still, it is nothing on that scale, and we are far from Karakura. That was… that was the district I was assigned to patrol. They knew to look for me there."

Now he turns to look at her, and the hope in his face makes something sharp stab under her ribs. "And it took them two months to track you down when they knew where you were? So out here we're—"

"No," she says softly. "My assignment was to remain in the field for a month. I had barely begun it when… we met."

"A _month_? By yourself?"

"That is correct."

"Lonely assignment," he mutters.

She smiles. "A month is not so long, when you live for centuries."

He blinks at her in surprise. "Right," he says. "I guess not." He looks away and, to her surprise, his spiritual pressure lessens slightly.

She feels she should say something to him, but she can think of nothing.

"Still," Ichigo says, sitting up straight, "that's another month and change it took them to find you once. So they're not likely to track us down _tonight_."

Rukia hesitates. "I suppose not," she says. "Though Soul Society will be searching for us much more seriously now, and they know what your power feels like." Bitterly she thinks, they know what my power feels like too, but I am so weak now it will hardly matter.

"…Right. Which is exactly why we should have more beer." He sticks his chin out and grins a stupid fighting grin, power thrumming rudely through the room again.

"Ichigo!" She buries her face in her knees, trying to stifle a giggle. "What we should do is train you to hide your power. But you are bad enough at it sober… trying anything now might be disastrous."

He scowls at her, but his lips sticks out in that ridiculous way and she cannot stop a laugh from escaping.

"Yeah, well," he says. He stands, and though he doesn't wobble, he does throw out an arm as though he expects to. Then he glares down at her. "You coming with me or not?"

"Coming…?"

"For more beer, more beer!"

"I will accompany you," she says primly, and stands carefully. "But when we return, we are doing something about your power problem."

"Yeah, Yeah."

* * *

The halls were completely empty on their previous beer excursion; this time they pass another young man and woman going the other way. The young couple have wet hair – probably on their way back from the baths. They walk close together, both smiling, though the girl looks somewhat nervous.

The boy – Rukia does not think he can be much more than a year or two older than Ichigo, though she is a poor judge of human age – winks and flashes a thumbs up at Ichigo as he passes. The girl meets Rukia's eyes for a brief moment before she stumbles slightly and catches herself on her companion's arm. Rukia puts a hand to her mouth to cover a soft laugh and looks up at Ichigo.

He is scowling straight ahead. Rukia laughs harder. "What a dumbass," Ichigo grumbles.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why was he a dumbass?" She almost manages to keep a straight face.

"Didn't you see what he did, stupid?" He glares at her. His cheeks are pinker than they were a minute ago. "He was – er… never mind."

"He only wished to congratulate you on making such a great catch!" She beams her absurd yet brilliant human schoolgirl beam at him.

"What is wrong with you?" Ichigo says. He is obviously trying to sound grumpy but the words come out choppy with bursts of low snickering. "Who'd want to be congratulated by that guy? He looked skeevy. And who wears matching yukata, anyway? Dumbass."

Rukia laughs so hard she has to stop walking and lean on the wall for support.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Ichigo stops walking and turns to watch her, but he is leaning back as if he fears she might be contagious.

"You," she chokes out around her laughter, "you idiot!"

"What now?"

He has taken a few steps closer to her. Still laughing, she raises an arm and waves her green-and-cream sleeve in his face. The she lets her arm fall, her hand sliding quickly down the edge of his arm until she can wrap her fingers around his wrist, raise it, and wave his own green-and-cream sleeve in his face.

He's pink all the way down his neck and out to his ears now. "That's different!" he snaps, pulling his arm out of her grip.

"How is it different, Ichigo?" she giggles.

"Those – they weren't wearing normal hotel yukata! Those were their own! Matching!" He turns away from her and walks briskly down the hall.

Her stomach is sore from laughing so hard. She holds it as she trots after him. "You cannot really believe that," she gasps around her laughter.

"You just shut it!"

When they reach the row of vending machines Ichigo shoves his coins into it hard enough that his thumb smacks the machine repeatedly. The low chink that follows each smack seems to echo Ichigo's annoyance in the quiet night. Rukia is about to tease him again when he thrusts the first beer can into her hands and starts more coin-shoving and button-stabbing. She decides to go easy on him. She will probably require his help to open her beer.

"Are you sure you have enough money for this?" she says to distract herself as well as him.

He pauses, one finger hovering over a large blue button. "Well – no," he says.

She looks up at him sharply. "Ichigo!"

"But it's not like we have enough for another hotel, either, anyway, so we might as well spend it now." He pushes the button. There is a heavy thump in the belly of the machine. Ichigo leans down.

"You fool," Rukia says, squeezing her own beer can. "We can sleep anywhere. We still need to eat!"

"That's what we're gonna get jobs for," he says, straightening and walking around behind her to head back inside.

"That is what you said before," she says slowly, following him down the hall. "What sort of jobs? Where?"

"Uh," he says, "this town up the coast. Sabiru. Selling food or tourist junk or something, probably. Whatever we can get."

"Sabiru," she repeats as he opens the door to their room.

"It'll be fine," he says, opening his beer and setting it down on top of the small fridge. Then he holds out his hand.

She passes him her beer. He opens it and hands it back to her. She watches little tendrils of cold white air curl away from the open top of the can. "Thank you," she says.

* * *

They tried to do it standing, like last time, but every time one finally got balanced the other would start to wobble, so now they sit facing each other on one of the beds. Rukia's holding his spirit ribbons in one hand and her beer in the other. Ichigo has to have his beer on the floor. Which is totally unfair. He almost spilled it before but that was her fault.

"As you inhale!" Rukia says for the millionth time, gesturing with her beer. "Pull your power in from the air around you."

"ShutupIam," he snaps. Then he breathes in, narrowing his eyes to slits and focusing on the image of his spirit ribbons drawing into his body, packing the soul form that shares space with his physical body, the ends of the ribbons sucking in like slurped noodles.

A bunch of the ribbons that were braided and twined together come unbraided and untwined, but they mostly slurped in this time, so that's probably okay, right? This time—

"It worked!" Rukia crows, popping up on her knees triumphantly. Her beer sloshes but doesn't spill. "Finally!"

Ichigo gives her a cocky grin. She beams back at him, real beaming, not the creepy kind. His chest starts to pull tight.

Oh.

He's holding his breath.

His grin turns into a frown and he glares at Rukia, but he tries to make it a questioning glare. A what-the-hell-do-I-do-now-I-would-like-to-breathe-again! glare.

Her smile falters. "What's wrong?"

Ichigo raises his eyebrows and, after a moment, puffs out his cheeks.

"Ah!" She says. Then she laughs a little. He glares more, minus the confusion this time. "It's all right," she assures him, "now you just have to separate—"

His breath bursts out of him, and all the ribbons go with it. Actually the ribbons might have gone first. They're all totally loose now, too. Not a red braid in sight. Ichigo drops his face into his hand.

Rukia falls back onto the bed, bouncing a little. "Idiot," she says. Not fiercely; she sounds exhausted.

"Sorry," he mutters. "But I was a lot closer that time, so—"

"No," she says. "Or yes, you were, but… I think – it is as if—"

"As if what?" He looks up at her curiously.

"Nevermind. We will have to do it another way for now."

He turns on the glare. "If there's another way why didn't we just do it before?!"

She looks at him seriously for a moment. She takes a gulp of her beer. Finally, she says, "Because I will have to bind you, and I am not sure that it will hold."

"Bind me? Hell no!" Where the hell is his beer? He leans over and fumbles around at the ground between the beds until his hand finds the can.

"Not your body," she says. "Your soul. Since there seems to be no room in you for any more of your spirit ribbons, I will simply attach the ends to your soul so they do not spread out so far or leave a trail."

He stops gulping his beer and frowns at her. "Can you do that?"

"Probably."

"Uh. Okay." He drains the last of his beer and puts the can back on the floor. "What do I have to do?"

"Just pull in as much of your power as you can for a moment – hold your breath if you must. I will take care of the rest." She finishes her beer and puts it down, too.

Ichigo narrows his eyes until all he can really see is the red waves of his spiritual ribbons, and slurps them in with his breath again.

They don't pull anywhere near all the way in, but Rukia says "Good," as she kneels up and grabs more of his ribbons in her empty hand. She pushes down on his head with the side of her fist. He ducks obediently so she can do something mysterious and – warm? – above his head.

He watches the indents her knees make in the bed as she says, "By the wind of the sea, breath of the great fire, roil of the high waves, by the hand that holds the mountains, binding spell number 43!"

The spell knocks the breath out of him as it snaps shut around him, though he doesn't feel it physically.

When he looks up, Rukia has dropped back down on the bed, her head turned aside, panting slightly.

"You okay?" he asks. He feels a little weird. Kind of… stuffed.

"I am fine," she says. She doesn't look up. "How do you feel?"

"Okay, I… guess." Stuffed is definitely the word. He wants to lie down and hold his hands over his stomach and not move for a while. Which is really weird because he's still kind of hungry and… gurgly.

"Good. Try not to—"

He doesn't hear what he's not supposed to do but he hopes it isn't barfing because he is bolting for the bathroom and no army of Hollows or pissed off shinigami would be enough to stop him.

* * *

Rukia had never concerned herself much when her drinking companions made themselves ill.

Except when they were sharing a small hotel room and she could not escape the sound and smell of retching. In Soul Society one went outdoors to be sick.

Ichigo had neglected to close the bathroom door when he bolted for the toilet and so she hovers in the doorway now, debating whether to laugh or grimace at the interesting spectacle of orange hair sticking out of the toilet bowl.

"You should drink water," she says when the vomiting noises stop.

Ichigo's hand, paler than usual, rises from the floor and fumbles along the toilet tank until he hits the handle. His head lifts up, face already turned to glower at her, as the toilet flushes. "No kidding," he says, voice raspy, then he turns back toward the toilet and spits into it with a grimace.

Rukia rolls her eyes and steps into the bathroom, grabbing one of the small plastic cups behind the sink. The room is little bigger than a closet, and her leg brushes against the side of Ichigo's hunched back as she fills the cup with water. "Here," she says, and shoves it at him. "Drink."

He glares but takes it and pours all the water into his mouth at once. Then he swishes it around and spits it into the toilet.

She snatches the empty cup out of his hand. "I said 'drink'!"

"I don't really feel like it's a good idea right now to put anything else in my stomach," he mumbles, leaning his head against the wall. The rest of his body slumps after it.

Rukia refills the cup and then crouches down beside him. "It is the empty stomach that is making you sick, idiot," she says. "Water will help. Food would help more, but I do not suppose we have any of that."

"Not so much," he says, and closes his eyes.

"Drink the water then," she says firmly, and puts the cup in his hand.

He sighs. Then he lifts the cups and drinks. When he finishes he thrusts the cup toward her and nearly hits her in the face with it.

She takes it back and reaches up to fill it again, then she sticks it in his hand again. "I am not going to pour it into your mouth, Ichigo. Open your eyes."

"'S too bright."

"Are you a child?" she snaps, but she stands and turns to flick off the bathroom light.

"Thanks."

She sighs softly and kneels on the bathroom floor. "Drink your water."

He does, sitting up a little straighter now. Then he reaches over her head to set the empty cup on the counter. "You don't have to sit here and hold my hair back," he says. "I'm fine."

"You will probably throw up again," she corrects. "Then you will be fine."

"Great." He slides down the wall a little.

Rukia watches him for a moment, then with a huff she drops onto her behind, drawing her knees up and leaning with her shoulder against the wall and her back against the bathroom door.

"You should go to bed or something," Ichigo says, leaning his head on his arm. Which is on the toilet seat.

She curls her lip in disgust, but says only, "I will." She doesn't move.

Eyes already closed, Ichigo nods.

* * *

It's snowing, and he can't see anything through the whirling white.

"To-who!"

He blinks and tries to squint through the snow, and for a second he thinks he sees – something, a different rush of white. But then it's gone, and his vision is going all swirly.

"Do-who you even remember what you saw last night?"

"Huh?"

He feels it this time, a change in the air and a brush of feathers across his face.

"You were _there_, were you not?"

He knows that frozen voice.

"You're that – something to do with Rukia's power. Where are you?"

"Something to _do-who_ with!" It flies straight at his face, and in-between ducking and shouting and swatting, he sees it – a snowy owl. "Human, I _am _all the power of her soul."

His nose is starting to run and he can't really feel his fingers. "Rukia's power is an owl."

The owl circles over his head, disappearing back into the snow. A moment later an enormous white wolf steps in front of him. "Not quite."

"What do you want?"

"What do I _want_? Foolish boy," the wolf growls. "I am trying to help you." It does not make that sound like a very nice thing.

"Help. Right. So, what, you have some cryptic message or something?" Snowflakes are melting on his skin and in his hair, trickling toward his forehead, and they're starting to soak through his clothes, too. He glares at the wolf.

It doesn't so much glare back at him as – the way it focuses its eyes on him reminds him of the way Rukia looks at him sometimes like he's an insect, only she doesn't usually look like she's thinking about chomping on his head, too.

"When you arrived here," the wolf says coolly, "I asked you a question."

"Uh," Ichigo frowns, "yeah. Except I was kinda distracted by you attacking my face."

The wolf dips its head down and a little sideways, and after a moment looks up at him with one disdainful black eye. "You do remember fighting the shinigami who came for Rukia, do you not?"

"What do you think I am, a goldfish?"

It parts its teeth in a wolfy grin, and for a moment its eyes glint green. "Not a bad comparison," it says. "Especially considering lifespan."

"I remember the fight," Ichigo snarls, "so what's your point?"

"You remember," the wolf says, circling him slowly, "yet you remember nothing… different? Nothing strange?"

He hesitates, turning his head, but not his body, to watch the wolf move. "I… remember those shinigami weren't half as badass as Rukia said they'd be. And I remember they were into naming their equipment."

"Ah!" the wolf says, a noise halfway between a growl and a bark. "You were paying attention after all."

The snow stops falling.

As it settles it reveals an odd landscape of long white lumps of snow against grey – the sky, he realizes, completely filled with clouds. Though it seems to be behind and under the white lumps as well as above them. His sideways world.

The wind picks up the moment he figures it out, lifting up the snow in whirling eddies, blowing it into small piles that spread across the landscape like waves, with glimpses of dark glass swept clean at their feet.

He looks back toward where the wolf was standing, but it's gone. Before he can even begin to look around again, a high, sharp voice breathes in his ear, "Now..." Ichigo jumps, but the voice goes on with a quick little laugh, "Now if we could just get you to _think _about what you've seen… and heard."

There's something soft on his neck, Ichigo realizes. Fur. It's not warm like something alive should be, but he can feel the little body breathing. "Think about which part?" he asks, reaching up toward the thing.

Tiny teeth snap closed over his finger. He hisses and tries to snatch his finger back, but doesn't say anything. Then the teeth let his finger go and that sharp voice says, "I am not here to be your personal tutor. You may ask Rukia if you cannot figure it out." Ichigo's hand is still hovering behind his head, and now a furry body wraps around his hand and wrist. "Or the other, if you can find him." It laughs. Ichigo can feel its little belly tremble against his palm.

He pulls it around in front of him and finds himself looking at a white weasel-ferret-y thing. He knows what the real name is – they make fur coats and stoles and stuff out of these guys. But he's not about to piss it off by asking it to jog his memory.

"Ask Rukia about the fight," he says, holding the not-ferret up so he's looking into its face. "I can do that. You got any more messages you want me to deliver?"

It doesn't move, and Ichigo isn't sure how he can tell, but he thinks it looks thoughtful. "Tell her… tell her I wish to be home," it says softly.

Ichigo frowns, but says, "Okay." At least he starts to say it. By the time he finishes the word he's talking to a toilet.

* * *

His mouth doesn't really taste worse than it usually does when he wakes up, but he spits into the toilet anyway, then reaches for the cup by the sink. As he turns he sees Rukia curled up in the corner, fast asleep. Stupid.

He stands slowly, leaning on the counter, but his head pounds anyway. He fills the cup with tap water, drains it, then does it again. Then he looks back at Rukia and debates: wake her up or just… carry her?

Yuzu has a tendency to fall asleep in weird places, and Ichigo's carried her to bed plenty of times since – since he was ten or so. Karin too, once in a while. Rukia looks almost smaller than his sisters, all tucked up there.

But if Rukia wakes up while he's trying to pick her up she'll probably knee him in the stomach or something. His stomach isn't really up for that.

But she's actually asleep. It hasn't been easy for either of them to do that today. Yesterday. However long they've been running.

He huffs softly and squats down next to her, puts his hand on one arm and carefully starts to move it so he can get his arm under her body.

He's looking down at her arm, but his head is kind of right in her face so he sees it way too clearly when she opens her eyes.

"AAAAHHHH!" he shouts, flinging himself back and smashing into the cabinets under the sink after about six inches.

Rukia cringes and ducks her head, pressing her ear into her shoulder. "What the hell are you doing, fool?"

"S-sorry. You scared me."

She just stares at him. The half-lidded eyes of how-can-anyone-be-that-stupid are surprisingly effective considering she's all hunched and tilted and probably not completely awake.

"I was gonna, uh, put you to bed. Because you fell asleep in the bathroom." Why the hell does it sound so stupid now? It's a perfectly normal thing to do! "But you woke up."

"I see," she says coolly. Then she yawns. "I suppose we should make use of the beds."

"Yeah," he says, standing. She yawns again and slowly starts to uncurl. He offers her a hand up. She takes it.

Ichigo goes out the door first and crawls into the far bed. It's an effort to make himself pull the covers back and climb under them before passing out, but he does it. He flops over and glances at Rukia's bed. She's managed to get herself under the covers too. He closes his eyes. "'Night."

"Goodnight, Ichigo," she replies, voice muffled by the bedding.

* * *

TBC 


	5. Tell the Truth and Then Run

_Disclaimer: _If I owned them, I wouldn't be posting this here, would I?

Chapter 5

**Tell the Truth and then Run**

"Rukia."

She opens her eyes.

"Rukia. Time to get up."

"I heard you the first time, Ichigo." She can't see anything in the dark room. This is probably a good thing, as her head threatens to begin pounding at any moment. She takes her time sitting up.

She can hear Ichigo moving, and as her eyes adjust, she spots his hair and the line of his cheek in the faint light that creeps in under the door and through a crack in the curtains. His eyes are in shadow.

"Does the light hurt your head?" she asks.

"Huh?" His head tips up like he's looking at her. She wonders for a moment if he can see better in this darkness than she – but that is ridiculous. "Oh. Who knows? Probably. Why, you want the light on?"

"I would like to be able to see," she says, voice dry, "but I would rather avoid a headache. Just open the curtains a bit."

"Avoid a headache," she hears him mumble as light begins to flow in. "That's an idea." Now she sees that he is standing beside his bed, rummaging in the duffel bag that sits at the foot.

"I'm surprised," she says, as she stands carefully and arches to stretch her back. Every night, it seems to her, this body invents a new way to kink up. She rolls a shoulder. "I had expected to be up well before you this morning. I was sure your hangover would be worse than mine."

Amusement cracks through his scowl. "You don't remember?"

"Remember what?"

"The wake-up call. You said you'd be up momentarily and I should worry about dragging my own ass out of bed. Then you rolled over and went back to sleep."

"Your 'own ass'?"

He actually grins. "Now I've heard you use that phrase twice in one morning. Maybe you're not hungover 'cause you're still drunk."

"I certainly am not." She folds her arms and looks around for her clothing. Her dress is on the small table on the other side of the room. She crosses to it slowly and picks it up to shake it out. It hangs from her hands, limp and creased, oddly stretched in places, and dull in the grey light. Rukia suppresses a sigh and an older, stranger feeling. It has been a long time since she's had to wear the same—

"Gimme that."

Clutching the shirt to her breast is an automatic reflex. "Excuse me?" she says, turning to glare over her shoulder.

"The dress? Hand it over so I can put it away."

"I do not have anything else to wear, you moro— Hey!" He's thrown something at her; she shakes her head and it slides off her hair and onto her outstretched arms. A dress. Yellow and pink, and clean. Yuzu's.

The old dress falls from her hands. "Ichigo…"

"Stupid," he says. He drops the bag on the table and bends down to scoop up the dress on the floor. "I'm gonna go get us checked out. You –" he points at her, dress in hand, then stuffs it in his bag, "—change. We'll meet at the dining hall."

She nods. "All right." She's still staring at the dress he brought for her, running the soft fabric between her fingers.

As he opens the door she turns. "Ichigo!"

"Yeah?"

"I do not suppose you thought to pack any of my undergarments?"

In the daylight streaming through the doorway, his flush is pink and bright. "Shut up and get dressed!"

Rukia smiles as he slams the door.

* * *

The dining room is almost empty. Those few diners who remain sit at one of the back tables, sipping tea and talking in low voices.

Ichigo hovers in the doorway at first, expecting to see Rukia coming down the hall any second. She doesn't appear, though, so after a while he turns into the room and kneels down at the first empty table. He drops too fast and his head spins, but since he's sitting now it doesn't make much difference. He shuts his eyes and rests his chin in his hand, resisting the urge to just lay his head on the table, and waits.

What is she doing in there? How long does it take to put on a dress? Maybe he shouldn't have packed the stupid thing. Things.

Some very nearby – as in, right in front of his face – clacking and clicking slowly vibrates through his brain. Ichigo opens his eyes to find Rukia sitting across from him, helping herself to bits of food from the dishes in the middle of the table. There's a plate by his elbow; she's been portioning bread and rice and natto out to him, too.

He does some groggy blinking. "How long have you been sitting there?"

She raises her eyes, but keeps scooping rice onto her plate. "A minute or two."

"Oh. Good." He rubs his hand over his face.

She raises an eyebrow. "How is your head?"

"Fine." It feels like an elephant is using his skull for a trampoline.

"Have something to eat," she says, tapping his plate with her chopsticks. "It will help."

Before Ichigo can tell Rukia he's just fantastic this morning, thanks, and/or swear he'll never drink again, a voice above him says, "Hangover?" He looks up, squinting automatically even though the light over his head is no brighter than it is anywhere else in the room. It's the guy from the bath yesterday.

"Good morning, uh, Grandfather," he says. He's pretty sure he was supposed to remember this guy's name, but _why_ is kind of escaping him. Maybe he'll remember when the pounding stops.

"Good morning," the man says, nodding, and maybe smiling a little. "Do you mind if I join you?" There is a definite twinkle in his eye. Ichigo resents twinkling even more than usual right now.

Naturally, Rukia sparkles at the guy. "We would be honored by your company!" Bitch. Ichigo just makes a grumpy grunting noise. They'll both interpret it as assent anyway.

Sure enough, Guy Whose Name Ichigo Can't Remember settles on the cushion next to Rukia.

"Did you two sleep well?" Guy-san asks, managing to wink at Ichigo while coolly slurping his miso soup.

"Yeah, thanks," Ichigo says around a mouthful of rice, pretending obliviousness to the wink and the implied eyebrow-waggling. He focuses on his natto, because he's suddenly remembering how Rukia recognized the girlfriend sign when that sleazy dude made it at them last night, and he doesn't want to look over and find out she's amused by this, too. Hopefully, she'll think he's hungover enough – or stupid enough – that she'll be willing to believe that Whatshisname's little hints are just going right over Ichigo's head.

"You kids moving on this morning?"

"We might wander around town for a little while," Ichigo lies, before Rukia can say anything that might give them away. "Uncle expects us this afternoon."

"Oh, visiting family," the old guy says. "That's nice. Not many young people spending enough time with their families these days."

Ichigo finds it difficult to swallow. He stares at his plate and focuses on making his throat work again; he can't speak.

"There is never enough time to spend," Rukia says softly.

There's a heavy pause, filled only by the soft clinking of cups on the other side of the room. Ichigo stuffs some food in his mouth and chews without tasting it.

"Aa," the old guy says finally.

Ichigo glances at Rukia. She's pushing rice around in a slow circle on her plate, staring at it intensely and obviously not seeing it at all.

* * *

Ichigo and Rukia step outside under an overcast sky; in the dull grey light, it feels like early morning. It is nearly noon.

They walk north in silence, following the curve of the road out of town, past low, old buildings, then wheat fields, and row after row of rice paddies. Sometimes they can see the ocean in the distance.

He's been walking along in a kind of half-asleep state, not really seeing anything, when a bird darts across the road, close enough that Ichigo can hear the beat of its wings, and all of a sudden he's fully awake, and he remembers. "So," he says, before he can stops and think about whether he really wants to bring this up.

"Yes?" Rukia prompts when Ichigo hesitates.

"Uh, so," he says again, talking sort of in the direction of the road ahead because the weight of the duffel bag is pulling on his neck. "I had another weird dream last night."

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Rukia stiffen. "You should not be surprised. It was probably alcohol-induced."

"Funny thing," he answers slowly. "Alcohol is a REM-suppressant."

Little glitter spots are floating around in his vision now from straining to look out of the corners of his eyes for too long. Not like he needs to see Rukia to know she's glaring at him anyway. He can hear it in her voice. "I do not know what that means," she snaps, "but I suspect it is not funny at all."

Ichigo blinks at the lines on the road. "It means alcohol isn't opium. It doesn't give you weird dreams, it stops you from dreaming."

"Ichigo, you just said—"

"Which is why I'm thinking maybe it wasn't a dream at all."

"…what do you mean?"

"Got another visit from my buddy, the polar bear. 'Cept it was an owl and a wolf and a—a white weasel-marten-ferret thing." He _knows _he knows what that stupid thing is called!

"I see."

"Rukia!" It would be really helpful to be able to turn his head right now. He actually considers dropping the bag and refusing to walk another step until she tells him everything.

"Ichigo…"

"Rukia," he tries again, calm, calm, "you told me this was an 'aspect' of your power. Like it's the weird-dream-having side of being shinigami. But the, the thing said it _is_ your power. All of it. And it told me… to ask you about some things. But I know you can still heal and stuff, so I don't know if it was even telling the truth. But it's SOMETHING and you know what it is and I would really like to know what the hell is going on!" Now he does stop walking, and turns his whole body sideways so he can look at her.

She closes her eyes and rubs her face with both hands. The bandages on them, now yellowed and fraying at the edges, give him a twinge of guilt, again, which he shoves away onto the growing pile.

"She," Rukia says.

"Huh?"

"What you have seen… is not an 'it.' She is a she. Her name—" Rukia pauses, takes a shaky breath. She doesn't look at Ichigo. He doesn't think she's really looking at anything. "Her name is Sodeno Shirayuki. She is my zanpakutou."

* * *

"I don't get it."

Rukia smiles wryly. "Of course you don't," she says. She has become used to his inability to process the logic of even her plainest explanations, and this is a complicated matter. Though she does feel she simplified it for him quite neatly. _Shinigami do not give our zanpakutou names, we learn their names from the zanpakutou themselves. _

Ichigo has been wearing the same angrily baffled expression since she first began to explain."You're saying… and, I guess, what the wolf – the _she_ – was trying to make me figure out, is that those shinigami we fought didn't just name their swords because they're sentimental weirdos. Your zanpakutou are… alive?"

"Not in the sense that you are alive, but sentient, yes."

"But that doesn't make any sense!" Just when she'd begun to hope they were making progress.

She might roll her eyes, if she were less tired, and less afraid of what Ichigo will think or do when he _does_ understand. "A shinigami's zanpakutou does many things an ordinary blade could not," she says. "You have seen only the barest hint of those capabilities."

"But what does that have to do with them having freaking _personalities_? What's the point of my sword harassing me in my sleep?!"

"Every shinigami's zanpakutou is unique. Its exact capabilities are determined by its shape and nature. And…" How can she explain this to him? How tell him that he is wielding not just her power in an abstract sense, but her own partner, a piece of her very soul?

"…and?" His expression is confused, but open. Expectant.

"Nevermind. Some aspects of the relationship between shinigami and zanpakutou cannot be taught." Not with the blade of someone else's soul, anyway.

* * *

Ichigo shifts the duffle bag around, swinging it onto his other shoulder. Again.

"Let me carry it awhile," Rukia says. Her voice is loud in her own ears, out-of-place in the tranquil landscape.

Ichigo glares at her from the corner of his eye, as if to say she's not even worth the effort of turning his head. "You have a bag."

"Just give it to me, idiot!"

He blinks, and when his eyes open again he is no longer looking in her direction. "No."

She stops walking, willing him to face her. He doesn't. "Ichigo."

"Shut up! The stupid bag's as big as you are. I got it."

"It _is n— _Ichigo. My clothes are in there as well, and I assure you this gigai is sufficiently strong that the weight of the bag will be less annoying than watching you squirm with it every five minutes because your shoulders are cramping!"

For a moment he just glares at the road ahead of them, eyebrow twitching. Then, abruptly, he swings the bag down and shoves it at her. She catches it with an "oomph!"

"You may carry my backpack, if you wish," she says coolly as she sets the duffel bag on the ground to rearrange her grip.

"Your—! …fine." He sticks his hand out in front of her face.

Rukia swings her pack off and places the strap in Ichigo's hand. She swings the duffel bag up, separating the two handles Ichigo had had bundled together, and using them as shoulder straps. Then she smiles.

Ichigo mutters something under his breath. She suspects it is "bitch." She smiles wider.

* * *

There's no strain in Rukia's expression – there's no anything in Rukia's expression – but Ichigo can see sweat beading along her hairline. The afternoon is still cool. "Enough of this," he says.

She looks up at him, one eyebrow delicately raised. "Hmm?"

"We're getting a ride." He shrugs her backpack up onto one shoulder and shoves his free hand into his pocket. Trademark stubborn stance.

Rukia gets a real expression on her face at last, a suspicious kind of confusion, as she looks up and down the empty street, then back at Ichigo. "A ride on what?"

"…In a _car_."

"You can get a car? Why didn't you do that before?!"

"Get – we are going to _hitch a ride_, stupid! How would I get a car? Steal one?"

Rukia shrugs, or tries to; mid-shrug, she takes one sharp step back, obviously overbalanced by the duffel.

Ichigo thinks about starting another fight to take it back from her, but his shoulders really are aching. Plus it's pretty funny the way, once she's caught her balance, she whips her head up to glare at him, obviously expecting him to say something. She practically stumbles again when she finds him looking down the road, unconcerned with her and her struggles between the bag and gravity. She wanted to carry the stupid thing, after all.

"Next time you hear a car coming," he says, "stick out your thumb."

* * *

It takes another forty minutes or so, four cars speeding by them, two with horns blaring, before someone stops. Someone going in the right direction, even. Ichigo had just been starting to wonder if telling Rukia to show a little leg would be worth the risk to his life, and he breathes a sigh of relief at not having to make the choice.

It's a young guy in a shiny blue sports car with an excessively high spoiler. The car whips by them at first, closer than is really comfortable, then, as the wind of its passing is still in their hair, it squeals to a stop just before the next bend in the road.

"Let me do the talking," Ichigo says as the car reverses down the road toward them.

"I heard you the first time, Ichigo," Rukia snaps.

"But will you listen," he mutters under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing."

The car pulls up beside them, windows already rolled down. The driver is a young man, no more than a few years older than Ichigo. "Hey," he says.

"Hey," Ichigo responds. This is a great start.

"You guys looking for a lift?"

"Yeah," Ichigo says.

"North?"

"Yeah."

The driver leans over and opens the passenger-side door. "Hop in, then," he says, and smiles up at Rukia. "I hate to see a lady left alone with a man who won't even carry the bags."

Ichigo bristles. "OI," he starts, and then stops, because they need the damn ride and it's none of this punk's business anyway. Rukia won't be—

"Oh my, thank you so much!" Rukia giggles, holding a delicate hand over her mouth and beaming. "I'm so glad such a gentleman is the one who stopped for us!"

Ichigo grinds his teeth. They need the ride.

They really, really need the ride.

* * *

Rukia is more exhausted after ten minutes of sitting in this car than she was while they were walking. Before they got in, she could and would have gone on walking, but now she is not at all certain she would be able to stand, let alone run, if they needed to get out of the car suddenly. She would like to close her eyes and focus on replenishing her energy, but that is not possible at the moment.

Kawamura won't stop talking.

"So I had to completely rebuild the engine," he says, "but it was worth it, because the next time I met that Sasaki I left him in the dust. I wish I could have seen his face, I bet it was so great." He laughs.

Rukia stares out the window, too tired to keep feigning interest.

"What do you think is the best type of car, Sato-san?"

"Sato can't tell a Honda from a horse and carriage," Ichigo growls.

Kawamura glares into the mirror suspended over the middle of the windshield. "What's wrong with you? You shouldn't talk about a lady like that, man. Sato-san might decide she doesn't want to run away with you after all."

Rukia feels Ichigo's reiatsu flare, and looks over her shoulder in alarm, trying to tell him to keep himself under control, but he isn't looking at her – he, too, is glaring into that stupid mirror. He opens his mouth.

"Please, Kawamura-kun," she says, waving a hand and knowing that she sounds more pathetic than easygoing and cheerful, "Tanaka-kun is just grumpy because his legs are too long. He doesn't mean anything. And it's true I don't know anything about cars."

Kawamura doesn't seem to notice how weak her smile is. "I could teach you," he says.

"Between here and Sabiru?" Ichigo snaps.

Kawamura glares into the mirror and presses his lips together.

Rukia waits for Ichigo to do something foolish, but when he remains still and silent in the back seat, she turns her head to look out the window at the country flashing past. Seventy kilometers, Ichigo had said. She wonders how long a kilometer is, and how many they have covered so far.

* * *

Ichigo falls asleep in the car. Glaring at the back of Kawamura's head gave him a headache – well, kind of made the headache he already had migrate from the back of his head to his temples, actually – and after a few minutes, it just wasn't worth it. That didn't mean he was ready to let his guard down, but he figured it wouldn't hurt to lean his head back for a minute…

He wakes up when the feeling of the road changes, when the car starts bumping and bouncing, and the sound of the wheels on the pavement grows louder than the wind.

He looks out the window beside him first, and there's the shoreline; the wind-tossed ocean is a dark, forbidding grey. Scattered here and there are shanty houses nearly as grey as the sea.

Ichigo turns his attention to the inside of the car, shoving his knee against the back of Rukia's seat to see if she's up.

When his knees are smashed up against his chest a moment later by the sudden backward thrust of her seat, he knows that she is. "Oi," he says.

"I'm so sorry, Tanaka-_kun_," she says, "my hand must have slipped."

"Uh-huh." A snicker from the driver's seat stops him from adding "bitch." He glares at the rearview mirror, but Kabamura (or whatever) isn't looking back at him. "Just fix it. Sato-chan."

Kawamunta leans across the center console toward Rukia, and says something in a low voice – Ichigo just catches something about "could have said _please._"

"How much farther are we from Sabiru, Kawamura-kun?" is Rukia's only reply. Her seat slides forward, and Ichigo lowers his legs with a thump.

"That's it up ahead."

Ichigo leans over the shoulder of Rukia's seat to look out the front windshield. There are more houses here, bigger and less run-down; what's more, along up the coast, maybe a mile away now, are actual buildings, the kind with multiple stories and glass windows and cars parked nearby. A long jetty stretches out into the water from somewhere inside the area where the buildings are clustered.

As they get closer, Ichigo can see people moving about, walking to and from the beach, or along it, or standing to talk to the vendors in the food stalls.

He feels Rukia's weight shift through the seat under his arm, and looks down at her. She glances up at him, then looks back out toward Sabiru, her face set with some kind of idiotic stubbornness. He wonders what she's thinking about – what the sight of the little shore town makes her think of… or remember.

"It looks nice," she says.

* * *

Kawamura parks the car right up against the sidewalk. "You know, Sato-san," he smirks, "if you'd rather go with someone nicer than this guy… or—" as he looks at her, Kawamura's expression turns almost solemn, "If he ever, you know, if you don't feel entirely safe with—"

"Thank you for the 'lift', Kawamura-kun," Rukia says, pulling the tab she had identified earlier as the door-opening device. The window rolls down. She glares at the door, feeling not just the usual frustration with ridiculous human things, but also an uneasy need to be out of the car _now_ that makes her consider blasting it open with kidou, though she knows how foolish that would be.

From the backseat Ichigo's hand appears, slipping between the door and her seat to pull a small handle embedded in the door. There is a small clunking noise and the door opens. Rukia scrambles out immediately.

She stands on the sidewalk and closes her eyes. The salt wind tosses her hair and dress.

Something thumps and bumps behind her, and she turns as Ichigo says, "Hey, little help here? Grab a bag, Ru—Sato." He shoves her backpack into her arms as he squeezes past the folded-forward front seat and climbs out of the car. As soon as he's out, he turns around and reaches back in for the duffel bag.

Kawamura is out of the car as well, leaning on his door. He looks at her over the roof of the car. "I'm serious, Sato-san. At least let me give you my number, in case…"

"No, thank you, Kawamura-kun." She looks at Ichigo's backside, sticking out of the car as he tugs on the bag in the backseat. "He will not hurt me. There is no need to concern yourself. Please accept our thanks for your help." She hesitates, thinking of proud, indifferent eyes and a perfectly straight spine, then squeezes her backpack against her chest and bows.

Ichigo pops out of the car and lands on his ass. He has the duffel bag in his arms.

Kawamura nods once and gets back into the car.

When he is gone, Ichigo looks up at the nearest building and sticks out his chin and lower lip in the way that means he is preparing to do something idiotic. Rukia frowns. Ichigo looks up at her. "Ready for what comes next?"

"Of course."

He stands. "Come on, then."

* * *

_END PART ONE  
_TBC 


End file.
